Chapter 35 coincide

He found himself seeing them as a happy couple at a glance.The young man is wearing a shirt, and the girl is soft and charming.They had come from somewhere else and knew the area like the back of their hands, and knew what this particular place had to offer them.As they approached, the air became heavy.This further implies that they are veterans, familiar with the area, frequent patrons, and in any case it will not be the first time.He had a vague feeling that they knew how to do it, which made them all the more comfortable.At this moment, however, the oars of the rowers ceased, and their boat seemed to drift with the current.The boat drew nearer, so close that Strether thought the girl in the stern must have found herself watching them.Suddenly, she said something, but her partner didn't turn around.In fact, it seemed our friend sensed that she was telling him not to move.She seemed to realize something, but as a result, the boat bumped a few times and finally stopped.This point came so suddenly and so quickly that Streiser hadn't reacted for a while.At this moment, he seemed to understand something.He knew that the girl, together with the parasol used to hide her beauty, formed a pink spotlight in this enchanting landscape.However, if he recognized the girl, and the matching young man with his back turned to match the landscape, the naked young man in this picturesque scene, it would be none other than Chad , that's amazing!That's called once in a hundred years, once in a thousand years!

Henry James, The Ambassador (1903) In the creation of novels, on the one hand, we must consider the structure, genre and its closedness of the novel; on the other hand, we must imitate the randomness, openness and details of life.These two aspects always appear alternately.Coincidence, which surprises with its symmetry in real life, is clearly exploited as a structural device in fiction.However, relying too much on coincidence can undermine the truth of the narrative.Of course, people's acceptance of coincidence varies from time to time.In his book Coincidences, Brian Inglis says, "The way a novelist uses coincidence in his fiction serves as an important guide for his contemporaries' attitudes toward coincidence."

Lord David Sissel said very humorously about Charlotte Bronte's use of coincidence.Bronte, he says, "extended the long arm of coincidence to the point of dislocation." This statement fit most of the great Victorian writers.Their stories are often long, intricate and profound.The characters in the book are all-encompassing and all-encompassing.It is interesting and instructive to connect a group of unrelated people through coincidence.It is also often tied to the theme of karma; for Victorians, evildoing must eventually be revealed.Henry James may have had the same intention for the climactic encounter in The Ambassador, only in a thoroughly modern way, where the innocent are defeated as guilty.

The protagonist of the story, Lambert Streiser, is an elderly American bachelor with an amiable personality.His dreadful protector, Mrs. Newsome, had sent him left Paris to verify rumors of her son's infidelity with a Frenchwoman, and to bring him back to manage the family business.Streiser fell in love with Paris at first sight, and also had a good impression of Chad, who had grown up, and his aristocratic friend, Mrs. Day Vionet. He believed Chad's words and said that they were innocent.Regardless of his own future, he sided with Chad in a family dispute.On his way to the French countryside alone, he stopped in a small shop with a view of the river.It was here that he chanced upon Chad and Mrs. Day Vionette.The two of them came to this place alone by boat.Strether realizes that they are indeed lovers.It pained him, humiliated him, and dashed his hopes.The wonderful, decent, and refined European culture he cherished turned out to be duplicity and moral decay.No wonder the New England commoners and Puritans held prejudice against them.

This ending was accomplished by coincidence.As the story says, "Once in a hundred years, once in a thousand years." If there is no trace of artificiality in this kind of ending, it is because these few years are the only turning point in the whole plot (it can be seen that James has a lot of things that make readers credulous. things), on the other hand, because the author uses his superb narrative techniques to let readers experience all this from Streiser's eyes, instead of letting everyone mechanically accept his straightforward narrative.Streiser's awakening has gone through three stages, and the author describes it in a leisurely manner.First, he observes the couple in the boat benignly, treating them as strangers.Their presence coincided with the picturesque pastoral scene before him, which was brooding in his mind.Build a narrative around this.From their demeanor he took them to be "old hands, familiar, frequent visitors." That is to say, as soon as he recognized Chad and Mrs. de Vionet, he had to face the unpleasant fact that, That is to say, they are a pair of old lovers who are familiar with each other and often visit this place, and they have been keeping it from him.Next, he found a series of inexplicable changes in the behavior of the couple: the boat stopped moving, and the rower stopped rowing.Apparently the lady had spotted Strether and told him to stop. (Lady Day Vionet considers how to avoid being recognized.) In the third and final stage, Strether realizes that "he knew that the girl, with the parasol she used to hide her beauty, , together forming a pink spotlight in this enchanting landscape." Even at this moment, Strether's mind was still thinking of the picturesque pastoral scenery.The moment he recognized Chad, he still tried his best to hide his surprise, pretending to be happy to meet him.After describing this coincidence vividly, James dared to call it "as incredible as a novel, as incredible as a farce" in the next paragraph.

The amount of coincidence in the conception of a novel varies from time to time, from style to style, and is related to the author's own degree of grasp of it.As far as my personal creative experience is concerned, I used a lot of coincidence in "Small World" and less in "Good Job". "Small World" is a comedy, and the title itself speaks for itself.Comedy readers or viewers are also tolerant of unlikely coincidences as long as they find them amused.In linking coincidence to farce, James no doubt had in mind the "comedy of the boulevards" of early this century French writers such as Georges Feder.These scripts are based on situations of sexual compromise, and "Small World" certainly belongs to this category.At the same time, this novel consciously imitates the intricate plots of chivalry legends, so the frequent coincidences in the story have their own basis.Another prominent example is the one centered around Cheryl Summerby.Summerby was an employee at Heathrow Airport.As the story progresses, he does errands and services for an incredible number of characters in the novel.Later, the hero, Perth Mokgarrigal, courts the heroine, Angelika.Angelica placed a note on the prayer table at Heathrow Church quoting lines from Spenser's The Faerie Queene.Perth searched all the bookstalls in Heathrow but failed to buy a paperback of "The Faerie Queene".He was just returning to London when Cherrill at the airport information desk took the book from under the desk.This shows that she changed her habit of being keen on worthless love stories and began to read such serious works.The reason for the change is that when she checked in for Angelica to fly to Geneva recently, the pedantic Angelica told her what is the real love story in literary works.In this way, Perth not only found the key to decipher the note, but also knew the whereabouts of Angelica.This is almost impossible, but in my opinion, the more coincidence the story has developed to this point, the more interesting it is, as long as it does not violate common sense.A man wanted information about a Renaissance poem and got it from an airport information desk.That's interesting in itself.Therefore, readers will automatically reassure their doubts after reading it.

"Good Job" has elements of comedy, but it is a more serious and realistic novel.I am well aware that coincidences should be kept as few as possible throughout the plot.If you want to use it, you have to use it cleverly or with justification.As for the success of the work, it is inconvenient for me to express my opinion.But here I want to illustrate my point of view through examples.In the fourth part of the novel, the protagonist Vic Wilcox is lecturing the workers when suddenly a girl's singing interrupts him.The girl is in sexy lingerie and is sneering at him.It's a prank by Vic's disgruntled sales manager.The meeting was about to fail, and at this time, the heroine Robin Purnrose stepped forward to rescue it.Robin ordered the girl to leave immediately because she was Robin's student named Marion Russell.The girl obeyed immediately.This is obviously a coincidence.Narratively, if it works, it's because there's been a hint that Marion might do it.Although the reader may not guess that the girl is Marion when she first appears, it is very clear in retrospect.So, I hope that by successfully unraveling the mystery (what was Marion's second job?), and by focusing on Robin's successful intervention, rather than on the coincidence she found, The reader's skepticism of such coincidences can be altered.