Freytag’s Pyramid/Plot Analysis, a la Shmoop.
We all have our favorite kinds of stories. Some of us like mysteries… [Man discussing stories]
…some of us like thrillers…
…some of us like romances…
…and some of us like books that are a combination of all of these things. But, no matter what [Goth woman appears]
sorts of stories we prefer, the plots of most tales follow a specific pattern.
Meet Gustav Freytag. He was a nineteenth century German writer who authored [Freytag typing]
works with names like Soll und Haben and Bilder aus der deutschen
Vergangenheit. Yeah. Easy for us to say.
While we’re somewhat less likely to read Freytag’s works than we are to, say, scale
El Cap without a rope… [Man scaling mountain]
…Freytag did leave something behind that we’re all familiar with…
…namely, Freytag’s Pyramid. And, no, that isn’t located in Egypt. [Pyramid appears and man lands on a camel]
Freytag’s Pyramid is a generic diagram that can be applied to the plots of most stories.
See, every time Freytag read a work of fiction, he noticed that many of the plots followed [Man discussing Freytags pyramid]
a particular pattern…
…a pattern that could be sketched out in the shape of a pyramid.
Freytag postulated that there are seven different items just about every story possesses, and [Freytag reading a book]
he placed these items on his pyramid. They include the exposition…
…the inciting incident…
...the rising action…
…the climax…
…the falling action…
…the resolution…
…and the dénouement. The first “e” in “dénouement” has an
accent mark, by the way, because this word is all fancy and French. [Man discussing denouement]
Let’s go over what each of these items involves in terms of plot, using Alexandre Dumas’
The Count of Monte Cristo to illustrate.
The “exposition” segment of a story occurs at the beginning of the tale… [Freytag walks from exposition point]
…and it’s where the author sets the stage by showing us who the characters are and where
the story takes place.
In The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas plops his readers down in the middle of Marseilles,
France in 1815…
…and then introduces us to the novel’s main character, Edmond Dantès. [Dantes appears on harbor]
We also meet Edmond’s dad and girlfriend…
…his boss…
…the two guys who are out to screw him over…
…and the one guy who screws him over but kind of didn’t mean to.
The next step in the plot, as charted by Freytag’s Pyramid, is the inciting incident. Basically, [Freytag explodes]
this is the event that sets the rest of the story in motion.
In Edmond’s case, he is arrested at his own betrothal party for a treason he did not [Edmond at Eiffel Tower and officers arrest him]
commit…
…thanks to the plotting of the two amigos Danglars and Fernand. Since the arrest occurs
at around page fifty…
…and The Count of Monte Cristo is better than one thousand pages long…
…it’s safe to assume that the rest of the book will be about Edmond kicking butt [Man with beard on an island]
and taking names. The next stop on Freytag’s diagram is the
rising action, which isn’t a specific event like the inciting incident… [Freytag walks to rising action point]
…but rather a series of happenings where the story builds and we, the readers, get
pulled along for the ride.
The rising action in The Count of Monte Cristo spans years, countries… [Clock ticks forward]
…the spending of a lot of money…
…and Edmond’s…
…er, we mean the Count’s…
…fabulous machinations as he plots out the destruction of everyone who done him wrong
prior to about page eighty. At the apex of Freytag’s Pyramid is the
climax, or the most exciting part of the story. [Freytag at the climax point and fireworks appear]
At the climax of The Count of Monte Cristo, everyone dies or is ruined…
…and the Count gets his revenge, even though he starts to think maybe this whole revenge [Count holding a sword in the flames]
thing wasn’t such a great idea.
A little late for second thoughts, eh, Count? Then, we come to the falling action, or the
events that occur in the story as a result of the climax. [Freytag falls down the pyramid]
In this particular Dumas novel, the falling action involves a secondary character hanging
around on the isle of Monte Cristo, eating hashish.
The resolution section of Freytag’s Pyramid is all about, well, resolution. The problem [Man discussing resolution]
or conflict at the heart of the story gets dealt with.
In the resolution to The Count of Monte Cristo, the Count reunites two young people in love…
…and accepts the love of the hot Albanian princess he rescued from slavery back in the [Man holding chains]
Sure, the Count was responsible for the ruination and/or death of a lot of people…
In the dénouement, any of the story’s outstanding business is tied up. Maybe the author explores
a theme or two, or hints at a sequel. [Freytag typing on typewriter]
Dumas has the Count sail off into the sunset with the hot Albanian princess…
…and scene. While every story is different, Gustav Freytag’s
contribution to literature was his observation that most works of fiction are constructed [Freytag reading big book]
along similar lines…
…and that this construction could be mapped out using Freytag’s handy-dandy patented
pyramid technique.
While this may not seem like a particularly interesting thing to be famous for… [Man discussing Freytag's pyramid]
…it’s better than being remembered as that popular German author who hated Poles. [Pole lands on Freytag]