Response paper to peter brooks' reading for the plot, and one of freud's most famous - Essay Example

Peter Brooks’ Reading for the Plot: Veering Away from the Structuralist View of Narration While Peter Brooks triedto veer away from structuralist narration because he sees it as "excessively static and limiting" (xiii), he still turned to the concepts and ideas popularized by Roland Barthes, a famed French philosopher, theorist, and literary critic. Brooks stressed the importance of the plot to the whole narrative. It is the center and the one that makes the story move forward and the readers turn to the next page.

Although Brooks focused only on two of the five codes Barthes introduced, the hermeneutic and proairetic codes, he concentrated on the "temporal sequence and progression" (xi) of a narrative through the plot, which spurs the movement in the narrative and makes the readers continue to the next page. Brooks gave importance to the middle of the narrative, which instead of being boring and tedious to read becomes “a highly charged field of force” (xiv) through the use of hermeneutic and proairetic codes to generate suspense, excitement, and a sense of mystery.

He further went on to stress the significance of the use of metaphors and metonymy as figures of speech that can make the narrative more lively and creative. Peter Brooks’ technique of giving importance to the plot and its twists through the manipulation of the hermeneutic and proairetic codes is a good way of making a narrative more exciting. The hermeneutic code’s “function [it] is to articulate in various ways a question, its response, and the variety of chance events which can either formulate the question or delay its answer; or even, constitute an enigma and lead to its solution” (Allen 86) while the proairetic code refers to “the other major structuring principle that builds interest or suspense on the part of a reader or viewer” (Felluga).

Brooks further states that the plot is “an overcoding of the proairetic by the hermeneutic, the latter structuring the discrete elements of the former into larger interpretive wholes, working out their play of meaning and significance” (18). In other words, the way certain events and actions remain unexplained exudes a sense of mystery and suspense that make the readers want to read more until the plot is resolved at the end. Instead of focusing on the structure of narratives, like Barthes did, Brooks found a way to concentrate on how to make the plot and the middle part of the book exciting.

In short, the whole narrative is made more compelling and gripping that will certainly have the readers hooked. Brooks diverted the focal point from the structure of the narrative to the more modern and practical view of capturing and holding the readers’ attention. This is what contemporary authors nowadays do. Although this has an underlying negative view that some critics might say as the commoditization of the written work by giving the main objective of writing narratives that readers would love and would eventually be considered bestsellers, Peter Brooks still made a breakthrough by shifting the importance from structuralism to what readers would want and enjoy—a more exciting plot and narrative.

Anyway, the essence of becoming a writer lies in the written works being read and appreciated by many. By following brooks’ methodology and guidelines, which is a modern view that incorporates Barthes’ more formal literary structure into a principle that can produce page-turners, writers can create novels and narratives that can effectively capture the readers’ attention. In writing this book, Peter Brooks certainly had the concept of how to capture the readers’ attention in mind, for this is the fundamental nature of written works.

The reason why writers write their novels and short stories is to ultimately capture the audience and give them a reprieve from the trials and tribulations they face in their lives. The aim of this book of writers to providing the readers with a compelling story made up of stimulating plot twists that they will excitedly turn the next page for more is very constructive for writers. Readers will truly read for the plot.Works Cited:Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. New York: Routledge, 2003.Brooks, Peter.

Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Vintage, 1984. Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Barhes: On the Five Codes." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 28 November 2003. Purdue University. 27 January 2007. .