CHAPTER XIX

GETTING THE NEW TWIST

No story is an old story if you give it a new “twist”—­a fresh turn, an original surprise, an unexpected course of narration.  As a matter of fact, this is what fiction writers and dramatists have been doing for hundreds of years; taking an old idea, they have twisted it about, enlarged upon it, provided a new setting for the story, and created something new, yet in truth far from new, from the idea furnished by another writer.  Who evolved the “original” plot in any certain case is a question that will forever remain a question, for the earliest plays and stories are no longer extant.  But this we do know:  there are only a very few original or primary plots, and all the plays, novels, and short-stories that have been written are variations of these.  Some writers have made the twist more pronounced, and their work, judged by present-day standards, is classed as original.  Others, without trying to conceal the source of their plots, nevertheless give them new treatment, and so are not charged with plagiarism.  Therefore we may conclude that that writer is entitled to be called original who is capable of so twisting and remodeling the theme used by another writer that it is, in the remodeling, virtually recreated.

1.  An Example from Fiction

As a concrete example, let us compare Poe’s short-story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” with Conan Doyle’s “The New Catacomb.”  In both of these the theme is revenge, brought about by having the one seeking to entomb his enemy alive—­the same theme, precisely, as Balzac had used earlier in “La Grande Breteche,” and Edith Wharton in later years in “The Duchess at Prayer.”  In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor desires to be revenged upon Fortunato because the latter has both injured and insulted him.  Exactly how he has been insulted we are not told; nor do we know the extent of his “injuries.”  It is sufficient for the purpose of the story that we know that his Latin blood has been roused sufficiently to make him eager to compass the death of his enemy—­who is none the less his enemy although, up till the very moment when Fortunato realizes the awful fate that is to be his, he (Montresor) pretends friendship for his victim.  After Montresor’s revenge has been accomplished by walling up Fortunato in a subterranean vault, the perpetrator feels no remorse.  He has completed what he set out to do, and is satisfied.  He has “punished with impunity” and he has made the fact that he is the redresser felt by “him who has done the wrong.”

What chiefly impresses the reader is the lack of motive for Montresor’s crime—­for crime it surely is, whatever his real or fancied wrongs—­other than the motive of a madman.  At the conclusion our sympathy for the unfortunate victim of Montresor’s hate is perhaps as great as is our pity for Montresor himself.