36 Dramatic Situations Examples

[Ina Dottery]

Thislist was published in a book of the same name, which contains extended explanations and examples. The original French-language book was written in 1895.[3] An English translation was published in 1916 and continues to be reprinted.

It influenced Christina Stead and George Pierce Baker, the author of Dramatic Technique.[4] The 36 situations have been critiqued as being "concatenations of events rather than minimal or isolable motifs".[5]

Georges Polti was a 19th century French writer described 36 situations that may be found in many stories, based on the list identified by Goethe who said it was originated by Italian Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806). Perhaps some of the themes and examples do betray a bias towards the stories of the day, yet they are still very useful stimuli and provide interesting examples of enduring and real human dilemmas.

Although this has been taken as definitive by some and Polti initially said there was 'exactly 36 dramatic situations ... and therein we have all the savour of existence', he later admitted that there could be more or less than this (it all depends on your criteria for division). He also said that these aligned with 36 basic emotions, although he did not list these (and has been criticized for this).

Dramatic Situation Conflict

One of the chief sources of people's absorption in stories, from timeimmemorial, has been their capacity to identify with people who are involvedin conflicts.To have a conflict, we have to have two things, and these things haveto be not merely different or even opposite from each other but activelyopposed to each other. Thus none of the following phrases suffices to specify a conflict: King Lear's daughters MacBeth's desires Hurricane Dolores the unconscious arrogance of the men towards the women in Susan Glaspell's play Trifles Mrs. Mallard's feelings towards her deceased husband (in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour") Each of these does touch upon something that qualifies as a conflict, but to formulate the conflict in question we have to say more. In some cases, we need to spell out some other element external to it it which it is involved in some competition. In others, we have to spell out what elements within the situation the phrase points to are working in opposition to each other. In Shakespeare's King Lear, the protagonist's two older daughters are hostile to each other (each strives for complete control of the kingdom their father has partitioned between them) and each ends up at odds with her father as well (Lear insists on being treated with the respect due a royal father, but as soon as he has abdicated in their favor, these vipers treat him as a nuisance to be rid of). Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia, remains loyal to her father, but earns his ire, and disinheritance, because she will not compete with her sisters in proclaiming her profound love for her him in a contest for his favor, because she regards this as an unnecessary and debasing ritual. MacBeth's desire for fame and power is at odds, and his desire for his wife's respect, are at odds with his conscience, when he gives in to her goading and murders King Duncan, a guest in his castle, in order to acquire the throne for himself. Hurricane Dolores battered Corpus Christi, Texas. In Trifles, the women feel insulted by the men's condescension towards them. Mrs. Mallard's feelings towards her dead husband are ambivalent: on the one hand, she things of him with love and respect, and with appreciation for his love of her; on the other, she feels resentment at the fact that, as a married person, one cannot live for oneself alone, but subordinate one's own desire to the larger relationship. Although the elements involved in a conflict often exhibit a stark contrast with each other, a conflict is not the same as a contrast. We can have a contrast without any conflict whatsoever.

Of course, there are single terms that do denote a conflict: "war," "struggle," "contest," "indecision," "ambivalence," etc. But these in themselves refer to situations in which at least two factors are opposed to each other. To specify a particular conflict we need to go into more detail about what exactly the factors are that are in in opposition to each other.The conflicts that are the bread and butter of much fiction are of courseconflicts that solicit the audience's identificationwith one or more of the characters. This identification can be distant orintense, simple or complex, partial or "whole," but ifthe conflict is going work by way of absorbing our interest, it will have tosolicit identification. We can take an interest in conflicts that do not engage us through identification, but these will rarely, if ever, be the focus of fictional stories or plays. We might be intensely curious, for instance about the details of plate tectonics that result in the uplifting of mountain ranges and the pulling apart of the sea beds. And this geologist's curiosity, which laypeople can certainly share, can be pretty much detached from even our remote worries about such calamities as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions: we can be deeply interested in investigating just how these processes work. But when these sorts of details enter fiction, they do so in virtue with more or less immediate predicaments of characters caught up in the kinds of situations the film Dante's Inferno is built around. In other words, the conflicts that fictions make their business are conflicts between human beings, or conflicts between human beings and non-human animate beings -- animals, spirits, divinities -- or conflicts human beings and natural forces -- the sea, the desert, snow, for instance -- or conflicts within human beings, or conflicts between agents who behave in the manner of human beings, e.g., animals with whom we can imaginatively identify, or plants, stones, or personified abstractions who exhibit human-like behavior. A dramatic situation is asituation, in a narrative or dramatic work, in which people (or"people") are involved in conflicts that solicit the audience'sempathetic involvement in their predicament. Often we are plunged directlyand immediately into a dramatic situation, right at, or shortly after, theopening of the story or play. (In such cases, it is the business of expositionto acquaint us with the basic facts we need to understand in order to grasp, atleast initially, the dramatic situation.) In other works -- forexample, those which use suspense to catch the audience's initialattention -- the exposition will be employed to generate instead some dramaticquestion.) Sometimes, though, the dramatic situation gets introducedmore gradually, as the action unfolds. (This may happen in works that usesuspense to capture our attention while we become acquainted with additionalobjects of interest.) Some stories engage our interest in dramaticsituation for its own sheer excitement (often a dramatic question comes toattach to a conflict's outcome), while others exploit it to draw attention tosome ethical or prudential point (a "moral"), or to interest us in thepeculiarities of character of one or more of the agents involved in it. And when we become enmeshed in a dramatic situation, we may find that its natureturns out to be more richer and more complex than it did in its first emergencein the story, or that its nature changes in ways we need to pay attention to.

The point of these reminders is that we want to avoid hobbling ourselves withthe illusion that all stories turn exclusively, or primarily, or even at all,upon conflict. We want to keep ourselves open to the possibility that the piecewith which we have to do is designed to satisfy other, or additionalinterests.

This kind of alert flexibility in the use of the concept is essential if ourreading is to be tactful rather than clumsy -- it the concept is going tofoster our engagement in the variety of experiences literature affords, ratherthan to hedge and hamper it.

Examples and further clarificationSusan Glaspells play Trifles opens with 5 peopleentering the kitchen of an Iowa farmhouse on a winter morning. Threeare men: the county prosecutor, the county sheriff, and the ownerof a neighboring farm who the day before happened to visit the house anddiscovered his neighbor, John Wright, strangled in bed, and Wrights wifeMinnie in a strange mind-wandering condition, barely able to attend tohis questions, and with no apparent idea of what has happened. The othertwo are women: the wife of the sheriff and the wife of the neighbor.They have come along to gather some clothes for Minnie Wright, who is nowin custody in the county jail on suspicion of murder. The two lawmenhave come to try to discover what might have been a motive for Mrs. Wrightto have killed her husband. Without a convincing motive, the prosecutorwill be unable to prove an essential statutory element of the crime ofmurder (in either the first or second degree). These facts whichthe playwright brings out by having the prosecutor ask the neighbor toreview the events of the day before are thus main elements of expositionin the overall plot of the piece: they constitute the initial situationfrom which the drama to come unfolds. As such, they establish theinitial dramatic question whichdirects the audiences attention to the events that immediately follow: will such a motive be found?They do not, however, constitute what in general usage is termed thedramatic situation of the play. Nor is the dramatic question (just referred to) the same thing as the play'sdramatic situation. This doesn't become clear to us, in this particularpiece, until somewhat later on. In fact, one function of the dramaticquestion -- which has to get laid on the table almost immediately -- isto hold our attention until we can get oriented with the deeper concernsof the piece, among which can be the thematic issues at stake in the variousconflicts the piece is designed to involve us in. (For more on thedistinction between dramatic question and dramatic question, see here.) Some stories plunge us directly into the initial dramatic situation itself. But others, like this play, introduce us to the dramaticsituation (or, if we prefer, to a set of interrelated dramatic situations)only after some further events have transpired.

This means we want to keep distinct in our mind the conceptsofdramatic situation and exposition. The situation presented in the exposition may or may not corresponded towhat we are here calling a dramatic situation -- or even to the particulardramatic situation with which we are first made familiar.Moreover, exposition (as the term is used in discussion ofworks of literature) is not synonymous with dramatic question. (Expositionhas the job of raising, in the audience, the dramatic question. Thetwo are no more the same than a launch pad or rocket fuel is the same thepayload.) Exposition can also acquaint us with thedramatic situation. As it happens, this is not the case in this particularplay.So, too, we don't want to confuse the concept of dramaticquestion with the concept that concerns us at the moment, dramatic situation. Both dramatic question and dramatic situation point are objects of audienceinvolvement in the action. The first has to do with curiosity overoutcome. The second has to do with the enlistment of our feelings,through our willingness to imaginatively identify with agents and forcesat work in the story, in situations of conflict. A given work mayseek to engage us in both dimensions, or in one (primarily or exclusively)or the other (ditto). It can of course be the case, in certain plots,that our suspense over how things will turn out is a suspenseover how a particular conflict we care about will be resolved. (In AmbroseBierce's "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge," the reader identifies intenselywith the protagonist's desperate struggle to escape being executed as aspy captured in enemy territory, and this hope that he will manage to prevail is as wedded with anxiety over whetherhe can survive, as one side of a coin is with another .) Butthis does not establish that in general suspense is always and only overhow a particular conflict will turn out, or that if we identify closelywith a protagonist who is involved with a conflict we are necessarily indoubt as to how the conflict will be resolved. Sugar and cream showup in many a cup of tea, but that does not mean sugar is cream.We may want intensely to know how an experiment will turnout, but we need not necessarily worry about whether a partisan of thisor hypothesis at risk in it will be proved correct or disappointed, orhave some other stake in the outcome (whether, for example, it will leadto a new treatment for cancer in time to save someone we care about).The audience of Oedipus the King knows from the outsetnot only that the action will end in disaster, but just exactly what thatdisaster will consist in. (The fact that this famous play is strikinglywithout a dramatic question has if anything enhanced the fascination ofaudiences over the centuries with the predicament of the protagonist, andis an important clue to what Sophocles' overall thematic concerns may be.)The fact that dramatic question and dramatic situation arelogically distinct is also an important factor in our being able to beinterested in re-living an imaginative experience we've already been through-- seeing a movie again, or re-reading a story.In rare instances, a work will dispense with both conflictand suspense, and seek to engage the audience in some other kind of interest. (Well, this is rare in stories and plays, but something of a staple, perhaps,with lyric poetry, as it is with high didactic art, like Alexander Pope'sverse Essay on Man or Jonathan William's sermon "Sinners in theHands of an Angry God.") Some cups of tee have lemon instead of sugaror cream.For more on the distinction between dramatic situation anddramatic question, go here.Note that in the play we are considering, Glaspell's Trifles,there are several conflicts of will -- and/or will and impulse, will andinstitution -- that are important in the larger situation the play bringsto our attention.There is the general conflict we come to know of betweenMinnie and John (his suppression of her need for companionship, throughhis own incommunicability, his frustration of any impulse on her part tovisit the neighbors or even to participate in church affairs, his refusalto bring a telephone into the house), culminating in the specific conflicton the crucial evening: the husband's flying into a rage at the singingof the canary that has always irritated him, his wringing its neck in frontof his wife, her struggle (ultimately unsuccessful) to get controlof her feelings (by turning to her sewing), and finally her somnambulisticstrangling of her husband asleep in is bed.There is the conflict that develops in the course of theplay itself (i.e., presented before our eyes, in the present) between thetwo wives on the one hand and the men folk on the other. The menrepeatedly behave towards the women in a condescending way, belittlingtheir concerns -- and women's work in general -- as "trifles" (in comparisonwith the important things of life, with which it is the business of mento be concerned). The women register this attitude from the outset,and increasingly show signs of their resentment of it. (Their resentmentis of course one of the chief factors in motivating their decision, inthe play's climax, to keep what they have learned from the men, not onlyto protect Minnie from what they consider a distorted system of justicebut as a revenge against a general male address towards females to whichthey themselves, along with Minnie, have been subjected).There is the conflict that emerges from time to time betweenthe two women themselves before they come to their tacit agreement to withholdknowledge of what they have found from the men.There is the conflict within each of the women, and particularlywithin Mrs. Peters, who is "married to the law" (the county sheriff), asto whether she will conspire with the other to "obstruct justice" (a felonyin its own right) in order to prevent a grave injustice as she privatelysees it. We can think of such a conflict as a conflict of wills withinthe protagonist(s): the will to do the right thing as one has beentaught, and the will to do the right thing as one has come to see it.

Not all of the conflictswe have summarized above constitute the play's dramatic situation, as thatterm is used in precise parlance.The term dramatic situation is not generally used to refer to just any situation characterized by conflict that a narrative or dramatic work seeks to interest us in. It is employed rather to point some conflict that the action of the playor story seeks to engage us in the presentation of. A dramatic situation(in this special technical sense of the term) will be part of the actionthat the story or play foregrounds as "present." In Trifles,the conflict between Minnie and John Wright is over and done with beforethe play even begins, and whose history is uncovered in the course of theunfolding action that the play does present for our immediate inspection.The questionarises: does the dramatic situation have to be disclosed atthe outset of the story or play? Is a dramatic situation(as the term is in fact used) the situation of conflict with which a storyor play begins?One might have elected to use the term this way. If we were to do so, however, the phrases "initial dramatic situation"and "opening dramatic situation" would contain a redundancy, and to speakof "the dramatic situation after such-and-such turn of events in the story"would be to utter a contradiction. But imposing these restrictionson ourselves would serve no useful purpose. On the contrary, we would like to be able to distinguish between situations of conflictearlier in some continuous history (factual or fictional) and situationsof conflict into which they later evolve. If we restrict ourselves fromusing the term dramatic situation to refer to these, we would have to inventsome other term for doing this (and then have to put up with the fact that,by itself, the phrase "dramatic situation" would misleadingly appear tobe doing just that!) Since the term "dramatic situation" offersitself to this purpose quite conveniently, the criterion of being disclosedat the outset has not ended up as internal to the concept it has come todenote.Having noted all this, we would want to stress that apracticed reader will be alert from the outset to any clues thatmight help clarify what counts as a situation the story or play is presentingfor our engagement in. That reader will also be interested in anysituations of conflict prior to the primary action to which thestory directs our attention in the course of developing whatever dramaticsituations it presents. The fact that we have no special term forreferring to these does not mean they aren't worth actively taking intoaccount!

Does a conflict that is put before us in the present action of theplay or story have to be resolved, to count as an instance or part of itsdramatic situation?There does not seem any point in limiting the conceptin this way. The purpose of the notion in the first place is to focus ourattention on a particular kind of source of audiences' imaginative involvementin the actions presented narratives and dramas. In Trifles,the conflict between the women and the men is not disqualified from beingspoken of as one of the play's dramatic situations (or part of the play'sdramatic situation) just because it is not resolved at the end of the play. Indeed, the play is so constructed as to invest its hopes of staying powerwith the audience in the fact that larger conflict between the women andthe men remains open when the curtain falls. The various issues connectedwith this conflict are, if anything, even more central to the ultimatetheme of the work as a whole than those the audience is left to ponderin evaluating the women's decision to withhold what they know.

Both sets of issues are bequeathed to our further, self-conducteddeliberation. (Glaspell could have arranged to include a debateon the question of whether their decision is justified -- for example,by developing in a different way the conflict between the two women, orby adding a scene in which they reconsider what they have done. Butshe elected not to, and the effect is to make us responsiblefor deciding, and preferably in our discussions with each other. The purpose of the play thus seems to have been to stimulate a discussionon the matter, not to direct the audience as to how such a discussion shouldend up. There are no doubt several reasons for this. The playwould have had considerably less punch if it had been extended in thisway: the result would have been dilution rather than intensificationor essential clarification. And, given the cultural situation ofthe audience to which the work was originally directed, going the nextstep may simply have been out of the question in any case: it isenough of a job just to get people to play along far enough to be ableto open the question of whether such an obstruction of justice (or "justice")in such circumstances could be fairly judged to be just, but for such anaudience to sit by and be instructed how and why the question should beanswered one way rather than another might be simply too much to expect. Finally, conclusions that we think the way to for ourselves are ideas towhich we are far more likely to be committed, perhaps even to the pointof action, than those we have passively agreed to under preachment, howeverskillful.But the more general question of what the conditions mightbe on which a genuinely just truce might between men and women could bearranged is even more important to Glaspell's heart. And this isnot something that can be decided in one author's play. Any solutiontacked on to the situation of the play is bound to strike the audienceas "false," because it would seem contrived. however sound it might actuallybe. (Even if it were raised only hypothetically on the stage, itmight come across as "unrealistic under the circumstances," and thus as"idle speculation." How the circumstances themselves would have tobe changed - what all this would entail!-- has to be bequeathedto society at large, or initially by various sub-groups within it willingto experiment with concrete alternatives for organizing the power relationsamong people. The resolution of this conflict-- thedeepest one the play wants to get the audience to reflectively and emotionallyengage itself with -- has to be left to the audience.That is why we would be at cross-purposes with our ownmotives in formulating the concept of dramatic situation in the first placeif we were to decide to insist on a definition that excluded situationsof conflict a story or play raises that do not get resolved in the courseof its action.The questions to ask whenwe tune into a dramatic situation are rather:

(1) Is it resolved? (2) How exactly did it come into being as it did, and to develop (or fail to develop) as it did? What are the crucial causal factors and conditions at play in its working out, and in its reaching this particular resolution, or this impasse?

3a8082e126