The Novel Tells a Story
Forster is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the novel has just one purpose to serve. Not one main purpose or primary purpose; just one single purpose. And that purpose is simple: to tell a story. Anything else is tangential and likely to destroy enjoyment of the whole reason for reading in the first place:
“the more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire. It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tapeworm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary.”
Moby Dick
The Great American Novel has already been written and will never be topped. It is Moby Dick by Herman Melville. But what makes the novel great is not its story. It is all that tangential stuff. Forster says the same thing, but frames his metaphor somewhat differently:
“Nothing can be stated about Moby Dick except that it is a contest. The rest is song.”
Plot
Plots seem to most people to differentiate very little whether unfolding on the page, the screen, or the stage. But that is not necessarily the case. The form in which the plot is contained wields tremendous influence over the complexity within which plot is played out. For instance, in the novel, according to Forster:
“the plot, instead of finding human beings more or less cut to its requirements, as they are in the drama, finds them enormous, shadowy and intractable, and three-quarters hidden like an iceberg."
Evolution
The novel is presented within the metaphor of mirror reflecting back all the historical evolution taking place before it. Even if everything has changed directly in front of the mirror—even if the reflected image bears no relation to what was reflected earlier—the mirror itself remains unchanged:
“As women bettered their position the novel, they asserted, became better too. Quite wrong. A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver—in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness”
Humanity
In an interesting choice of imagery, Forster inextricably links the novel with humanity. He even goes so far as to suggest that taking humanity out of the novel leaves it as nothing but a collection of meaningless words:
“The intensely, stiflingly human quality of the novel is not to be avoided; the novel is sogged with humanity; there is no escaping the uplift or the downpour, nor can they be kept out of criticism.”
