Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld

Author:Jordan Rosenfeld [Rosenfeld, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-03T07:00:00+00:00

"Do you?"

"You have secrets?" I was surprised. ...

"Unknown truths," my brother joked. "At least to you. Known to me, of course. At least in theory. What I know and what I don't know, I'm not sure I can be the judge of that."

"Oh forget it." I was annoyed.

The tug-of-war style of conversation delays the reader's access to Ned's secret (a piece of plot information, incidentally), thus building tension. Then the tension mounts even more when the narrator keeps her secret a little longer. The scene shows the reader that both characters have an investment in keeping secrets, but the reader has to keep going to find out how these secrets will converge, and what effect they'll have when brought to light.

Here's another tug-of-war example, from J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize-winning novel, Disgrace. In apartheid-fueled South Africa, white professor David Lurie has come to stay with his slightly estranged daughter Lucy to flee scrutiny after a scandal involving an affair with one of his college students. In trying to escape one terrible event, he becomes a part of another, when his daughter and he are attacked by black men in her home as a territorial act. David is badly burned, and Lucy is ostensibly raped—but David doesn't know for sure, since he was not in the room with her and she won't tell him what happened. However, he quickly urges Lucy to press charges against the boy. Lucy has her own political and personal reasons for not wanting to do so. And there is the other, unspoken subtext, that if not for his own bad deeds, he wouldn't even have been there for her at all. Notice the feeling of tug-of-war between them—how they both want something and are resisting something at the same time:

Sitting across the table from him, Lucy draws a deep breath, gathers herself, then breathes out again and shakes her head.

"Can I guess?" he says. "Are you trying to remind me of something?"

"Am I trying to remind you of what?"

"Of what women undergo at the hands of men?"

"Nothing could be farther from my thoughts. This has nothing to do with you, David. You want to know why I have not laid a particular charge with the police? I will tell you, as long as you agree not to raise the subject again. The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone."

"This place being what?"

"This place being South Africa."

"I don't agree. I don't agree with what you are doing. Do you think that by meekly accepting what happened to you, you can set yourself apart from farmers like Ettinger? Do you think what happened here was an exam: if you come through, you get a diploma and safe conduct into the future, or a sign to paint on the door lintel that will make the plague pass you by? That is not how vengeance works, Lucy.

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