by Robert McKee
The scene arcs its primary values from positive to negative: hope to despair, security to danger, success to failure, self-respect to self-hatred. As the scene opens, Walter has hope to gain success and with that, self-respect. Ruth clings to her hope for security. But the scene’s ever-escalating beats of action/reaction push Ruth further and further from a secure future, while driving Walter further and further from his immediate goal of financial success, and even further from his life-fulfilling desire for self-respect. What’s more, because we sense that underneath the arguing these two people love each other, the climax of the scene puts their marriage in jeopardy. The scene ends on the deeply negative: Walter’s hope turns to despair; Ruth’s security turns to danger.
To fully appreciate Hansberry’s genius, notice that as she executes her immediate task of arcing the scene around its value changes, she also uses its second movement to set up Walter’s long-term character arc.
A character arc is a profound change, for better or worse, in a character’s moral, psychological, or emotional nature, expressed in values such as optimism/pessimism, maturity/immaturity, criminality/redemption, and the like. The character’s inner nature may arc from the positive (caring) to the negative (cruel), as does Michael in THE GODFATHER PART II, or from the negative (egoist) to the positive (loving), as does Phil in GROUNDHOG DAY.
Therefore, the writer must clearly establish the character at the positive or negative of a value early in the story, so that the audience can understand and feel the arc of change. Walter is the only character in the play that undergoes moral change, and so Hansberry ingeniously uses Beats 12 to 16 to set up his nature and need for change.
In five progressive beats of dialogue, Hansberry expresses Walter’s desperate desire for self-respect and the respect of his family and dramatizes that he has neither. After turning Walter’s super-intention to the negative (wounded pride) in Act 1, Hansberry takes Walter down to an even deeper hell of self-loathing and familial disgust at the Act 2 climax. At last she resurrects Walter when he makes a choice and takes an action that wins him self-respect as well as the love and admiration of his wife and family at the story climax. Walter’s character arc from self-hatred to self-respect lifts A Raisin in the Sun well above conventional social dramas about racial prejudice.
Now let’s take this excellent scene and ruin it. I’ll demonstrate how the same dialogue beats could have been anti-progressive:
Suppose Hansberry had started the scene with its turning points: Walter asks Ruth whether she’d like to know what he’s thinking about and she says, “I already know. Your father’s life insurance. Walter, that is not our money! It’s your mother’s. So forget it. And what’s more, I’m tired of listening to your whining about your misery and blaming me for your failed life. You, Walter, are responsible for every mistake you’ve ever made.”
In reaction Walter could still go on about Ruth’s lack of support, the glories of the liquor store business, how easy it would be to persuade his mother, how he hates his life and blames Ruth’s typical black woman’s attitude for it all. The necessary exposition about the money, his plans, his life, and his feelings about his wife would get out. The audience would learn what it needs to know but be bored stiff because it realizes that Walter’s arguments are pointless. Ruth has said “No!” and means it. So, with zero tension and zero suspense, the scene would bump and crumble into a rubble of exposition.
Or I could ruin it another way by bringing in the turning points too late, elongating the scene by repeating its beats. Walter could expand on all the money he could have made in the dry-cleaning business; he could sing the praises of those extraordinary businessmen, Willy and Bobo; he could glorify the liquor store scheme and describe the furs, jewelry, and new home he would buy for Ruth and their son with the fortune he would make.
When she finally nails him with the fact that his mother’s money is not his, Walter could then launch a century-long history of the black woman as the black man’s burden—on and on until Ruth shuts him up. Again the audience loses interest as fact after fact is hammered home over and over. When the turning points finally arrive, they’d have less than half their full impact because the exposition has worn down the audience. Notice that when Hansberry does use repetition, such as Walter’s “egg” speech (Beat 7), it’s to give the actor three drumbeats to build to an emotional peak—but no more.
Or worse yet, she could have written the scene with no turning points at all. She could have poured out three pages of breakfast table talk about business plans, Mother’s money, their lousy marriage, and the fate of black men and women. But she didn’t. She wrote a revealing, moving, progressive scene that beat by beat hits two turning points that in turn set up her whole play.
Like the scene we just studied, every scene, ideally, works as both payoff and setup. Something has changed since the last confrontation between a scene’s characters. Therefore, what is said now pays off things that happened in the past. As these payoffs reverberate through the dialogue, what is said now will in turn set up effects in future scenes.
And like the examples from THE SOPRANOS and FRASIER, Hansberry’s skilled creation of Walter Lee carried Sidney Poitier into nominations for a Tony Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Award.
In the three previous chapters, dramatized scenes called for actors to strike major chords of heated emotion around wrenching turning points. Let’s now look at a prose scene with cool tones and muted action.
16
INDIRECT CONFLICT
THE GREAT GATSBY
Chapter One of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel introduces the reader to the story’s narrator, Nick Carraway. Nick has come to New York to begin his Wall Street career. He has rented a house in West Egg, Long Island. His neighbor is Jay Gatsby, a fabulously wealthy young man who has made a fortune as a bootlegger. West Egg is home to the well-to-do, but it is far less fashionable than its very exclusive counterpart across the bay, East Egg. Nick’s cousin, the beautiful Daisy, lives in an East Egg mansion with her wealthy husband, Tom Buchanan, a powerfully built former Ivy League athlete. The Buchanans invite Nick for dinner, and there he meets Miss Jordan Baker, a female golf star who, like the Buchanans, is also upper class.
Fitzgerald has written his novel in the first person from Nick’s point of view. Below is Fitzgerald’s subchapter broken into eight beats. The scene begins with the foursome sipping drinks before dinner. Miss Baker turns to Nick and says:
BEAT 1
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
BEAT 2
Before I could reply that he was my neighbor, dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
BEAT 3
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers.
BEAT 4
“In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and miss it.”
BEAT 5
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly.
“What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained. “I hurt it.”
We all looked�
��the knuckle was black and blue.
BEAT 6
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to do it but you did do it.
BEAT 7
“That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking’,” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
BEAT 8
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
That ends the scene.
Before I begin my analysis, a few words on point of view.
First, a definition: Point of view is that place in the global space of a story’s world that the writer or director places us so we can witness the scene. By global space, I mean the 360 degrees of horizontal angles that surround a subject, combined with the 360 vertical degrees of angle above and below the subject.
In the theatre, we look at the onstage life from that fixed POV of the seat we purchased. All of the characters’ actions and reactions are in front of us at all times. We are more or less free to glance from one character to another at any moment, but that’s our only POV choice, and that choice will be greatly influenced by the director’s staging as well as the voices and movements of the actors.
In television and film, we see what the camera sees. As it moves through the global storytelling space, it controls but does not rigidly limit our POV. For as we gather in the establishing shots, supplemented with group shots, two-shots, or close-ups, and the like, we become aware of life offscreen as well as onscreen. As a result, we often imagine actions and reactions we do not in fact see.
Prose offers the writer the greatest freedom in point of view choices, and yet at the same time, for the reader, prose is the most controlling storytelling medium. Like other media, prose can view scenes from anywhere in the physical world, but it also adds subjective angles within a character’s mental world. Once the prose writer makes a choice of person (first, third, or the eccentric second), her eye moves from that angle like a spotlight. The author holds our perception in her fist.
As we follow her sentences, she takes us where she wishes: through the places, times, and societies of her world; or into a single character’s thought-filled depths, there to witness rationalizations, self-deceptions, and dreams; or deeper yet, into the character’s subconscious to reveal her raw appetites, nightmarish terrors, and lost memories.
When skillfully executed, POV has such power that unless we deliberately stop, pull out of the telling, and put our imaginations to work, we are drawn through the tale, seeing and hearing only what the storyteller wants us to, and no more.
Therefore, in the following analysis, when I describe Tom Buchanan’s reaction to Daisy’s abrupt snuffing out of the candles, I am imagining the scene the way Fitzgerald might have imagined it before he wrote the final draft. Like all fine writers, Fitzgerald no doubt worked through the scene draft after draft, adding, cutting, reordering, phrasing, and rephrasing until he had a sense of its totality. And as he reworked the scene, he likely imagined it from each and every character’s viewpoint, even though he knew that he would ultimately control his prose through Nick’s point of view.
Now to the scene: Suppose you prepared a romantic candlelit dinner and your spouse abruptly snuffed out the candles without a word or look to you. What would you feel? How would you react? Tom must have been offended. So to analyze the full life of Fitzgerald’s mini-drama, I must re-create the scene as he envisioned it before he wrote it and include the reactions that Fitzgerald chose to imply but not describe.
Inciting Incident
As the scene opens, Daisy’s and Tom’s life seems contented and in balance. The value of marriage/divorce is at its positive charge. But secretly, Daisy finds married life very tedious. Her inner charge of excitement/boredom sits at the nadir.
BEAT 1
ACTION: Jordan revealing that Gatsby lives in West Egg.
REACTION: Daisy concealing her surprise.
Beat 1 triggers the novel’s inciting incident: Daisy discovers that Jay Gatsby has moved nearby. What’s more, Jordan and Nick know him. This revelation immediately throws her life out of balance. The positive charge of marriage/divorce begins to erode toward the negative, while her excitement for Gatsby resurfaces.
In her late teens Daisy fell passionately in love with Jay Gatsby. Their rich girl/poor boy affair ended when Gatsby left to fight in World War I. Soon after their breakup, the socially ambitious Daisy married the wealthy Tom Buchanan. In recent years Gatsby has become scandalously rich and famous. Daisy has no doubt read or heard about his exploits. She may also have learned that he purchased a huge estate across the bay. In fact, Gatsby bought the home so he could look across the narrow waters to the lit windows of her home.
When Daisy asks, “What Gatsby?” she knows full well it’s Jay Gatsby, but she cleverly uses the question to conceal her genuine surprise to learn that her former lover is now a virtual neighbor and, furthermore, that her friend knows him and her cousin lives near him.
The realization that Gatsby has moved close to her, undoubtedly drawn to West Egg because of her, upsets the balance of Daisy’s life and arouses in her the desire to see him. To renew their love? Have an affair? Leave her husband? Who can say how far she intends to go? Daisy’s fluidly fickle nature makes her incapable of decisive plans into the future, but this much is clear: Her super-intention is, at the very least: to see Jay Gatsby. Gatsby becomes her object of desire.
This puts two core values into play: marriage/divorce and boredom/passion—the security of her marriage versus her passion for Gatsby. She must risk the former to gain the latter.
Daisy’s choice: To keep marital peace or go to war? At the top of the scene, the value charges are positive for Daisy’s marriage (before dinner, husband and wife are amiable) but negative for Daisy’s passion (Gatsby is out of reach).
Beyond seeing Gatsby, exactly what Daisy wants from him, Fitzgerald deliberately hides in the subtext. But note Daisy’s choice: She risks her marriage and goes to war with her husband.
BEAT 2
ACTION: All walking to the dinner table.
REACTION: Daisy planning to humiliate Tom.
Daisy’s problem is that she cannot just pick up a telephone and call Gatsby. Her pride and vanity won’t allow her. What’s more, if her husband and the rigid, snobbish society she moves in were to discover that she pursued the notorious Gatsby, the scandal would ruin her.
Instantly, instinctively, she decides to put on a show in front of Nick and Jordan so that one or both will carry a message to Gatsby, a message that says the Buchanan marriage is in trouble. Daisy takes command of the scene and drives it to its turning point. Her scene intention becomes: to humiliate her husband in public. Tom’s scene intention, it’s fair to assume, is: to avoid public humiliation. These directly opposed desires set the scene’s terms of antagonism.
Tom Buchanan has had his household staff set the dinner table with candles. He may have done it for Daisy’s sake, or perhaps he intended this romantic touch to encourage Nick and Jordan. Indeed, in time those two will have a summer affair.
BEAT 3
ACTION: Daisy destroying her husband’s romantic gesture.
REACTION: Tom concealing his annoyance.
But whatever Tom’s reason, as they step up to the table, the “frowning” Daisy objects to the candles and snuffs them out with her fingers. Tom reacts by concealing the hurt she causes him and saying nothing. The positive charge of marriage declines further as Daisy’s boredom changes into excitement.
BEAT 4
ACTION: Daisy opening a conversational subject.
REACTION: Daisy turning the subject back to herself.
In this beat Daisy starts a conversation about the summer solstice, but before anyone can respond to her strange question, she reacts to her own action and ends the topic by referring it back to herself. The value charges of marriage/divorce and excitement/boredom are unaffected and remain the same as they w
ere in Beat 3.
BEAT 5
ACTION: Jordan and Daisy wondering aloud to the others.
REACTION: Daisy calling attention to her finger.
The summer season has just begun, so Jordan starts the next beat by suggesting that they plan something to do. Daisy simply continues that action by repeating the question twice, not to her husband, but to Nick. But before Nick can answer, she instantly and literally wraps the conversation around her little finger. The value charges of marriage/divorce and excitement/boredom continue on pause.
BEAT 6
ACTION: Daisy accusing Tom of injuring her.
REACTION: Tom hiding his reaction in silence.
Daisy faces a crisis dilemma: She could insult her husband (negative), which might send a message to Gatsby (positive), or she could protect her marriage (positive) but not win Gatsby’s attention (negative). Daisy chooses to accuse her husband of bruising her finger. Again, Fitzgerald gives Tom no visible reaction, not a word of protest. The value charge of marriage/divorce turns dark, while excitement/boredom shines.
BEAT 7
ACTION: Daisy insulting her husband in public.
REACTION: Tom ordering her not to insult him again.
Daisy, then, with cool irony, insults her husband with a special emphasis on a word that she knows he hates: hulking. Finally, Tom objects.
Bear in mind that these are educated, upper-class characters, so when I use the verb “ordering” to name Tom’s reaction, it’s because that’s what he’s doing in the subtext. Tom is too well behaved to say, “Damn it, Daisy, never use the word ‘hulking’ again!” But under the phrase “I hate that word…” is an indirect command.