A Pattern of Humanity
Early on, the author carves out an assertion which he will then doggedly pursue as imagery: “We may hate humanity, but if it is exorcised or even purified the novel wilts, little is left but a bunch of words.” One thing is for certain: humanity is not exorcised from this book. Relentlessly and pervasively, the author returns again and again to the idea that literature cannot be extricated from the human experience to the point that the pattern itself become a form of imagery:
“human intercourse, as soon as we look at it for its own sake and not as a social adjunct, is seen to be haunted by a spectre.”
“Our comments on human beings must now come to an end. They may take fuller shape when we come to discuss the plot.” [Spoiler Alert: they do.]
“OUR interludes, gay and grave, are over, and we return to the general scheme of the course. We began with the story, and having considered human beings, we proceeded to the plot which springs out of the story."
The Circular Room
The entire history of the writing of the English novel is situated by the author in the imagery of all those authors sitting together at once in a circular room, all composing their works at the same time regardless of actual chronological order. A few pages he will return to the image to extend the metaphor, asking the reader to imagine it precisely without assigning any names, as names stimulate prejudicial associations. The imagery is designed by the author to indicate that regardless of external events operating within their individual chronological time frames, they are all operating collectively as creators whose first and foremost interest is not writing to their age, but hoping their writing will prove ageless.
Death and Darkness
Two great mysteries of live occur at the beginning and end are both unknowable through experience: birth and death. The more robust of these mysteries for the writer of fiction is death, however, because birth is inherent a turning on of the light while the death flicks the switch off:
“The treatment of death…is nourished much more on observation, and has a variety about it which suggests that the novelist finds it congenial. He does, for the reason that death ends a book neatly, and for the less obvious reason that working as he does in time he finds it easier to work from the known towards the darkness rather than from the darkness of birth towards the known…The doors of that darkness lie open to him and he can even follow his characters through it, provided he is shod with imagination”
What Does a Novel Do?
Another example of repetition as imagery is the author’s answer to a question posed: what does a novel do? This is a question that would not seem easily answered considering that what a horror novel does is significantly different from a romance novel does. But Forster is equipped with an answer that never varies and which both commences and closes Chapter II and pervades over the rest of the book so steadfastly that it qualifies as imagery even when it is lacks assertion:
“Yes—oh, dear, yes—the novel tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which it could not exist.”
“That is why I must ask you to join me in repeating in exactly the right tone of voice the words with which this lecture opened. Do not say them vaguely and good-temperedly like a busman: you have not the right. Do not say them briskly and aggressively like a golfer: you know better. Say them a little sadly, and you will be correct. Yes—oh, dear, yes—-the novel tells a story.”
