Summary
Aristotle elaborates on what he means when he says that the action of a tragedy
is complete in itself and with magnitude. For a plot to be a complete whole, it
must have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is a point that does not
necessarily follow from anything else, which naturally has consequences
following from it. The end is a point that naturally follows from preceding
events but does not have any necessary consequences following it. The middle is
a point that is naturally connected both to events before and after it.
The magnitude of a story is important, as it is in any art. Paintings are
neither infinitesimally small nor monstrously big because they must be of such a
size as to be taken in by the eye. Similarly, a tragedy must be of a moderate
length so as to be taken in by the memory. Usually, time limits are set by the
audience or other outside factors, but Aristotle suggests that the longer the
play the greater the magnitude, provided the poet can hold the tragedy together
as one coherent statement. As a general rule of thumb, he suggests the action
should be long enough to allow the main character to pass through a number of
necessary or probable steps that take him from fortune to misfortune or vice
versa.
In insisting upon the unity of plot, Aristotle makes it clear that he does not
mean that it is enough to focus the plot on the life of one individual. Our
lives consist of all sorts of disconnected episodes, and the story of a man's
life would rarely have the completeness necessary for a unified plot. Rather,
the poet must select some series of events from a character's life—as
Homer does in the Odyssey—and craft them into a
coherent whole. Any part of a story that could be added or removed without any
great effect on the rest of the story is superfluous and takes away from the
unity of the piece.
Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history, saying that while history
deals with what has been, poetry deals with what might be: it presents the
possible as probable or necessary. Poetry is superior to history because history
always deals with particular cases while poetry can express universal and
general truths. Tragedy gives a feeling of necessity—or at least
probability—to the way certain characters behave in certain situations and
thus gives us insight into general principles regarding fate, choice, and so on.
The worst kind of plot is the episodic plot, where there is no seeming necessity
or probability whatsoever between events.
As a medium that arouses pity and fear, tragedy is most effective when events
occur unexpectedly and yet in a logical order. The ideal is to have the audience
see the final outcome of a tragedy as the necessary consequence of all the
action that preceded it, and yet have that outcome be totally unexpected.
Analysis
Essentially, a good plot is a complete causal chain that leads, with necessity
or probability, from beginning to end. The beginning is the first link in a
chain that is itself not necessarily caused by any events that precede it. The
events that follow are necessary or probable consequences of this un-caused
beginning. Each event follows the next until we arrive at the end, which is also
a necessary or probable consequence of all the events that have preceded it.
This end does not itself cause any further events with any kind of necessity or
probability and so concludes the causal chain.
