Aspects of the Novel

While the previous chapter addresses the story—“what” happened, and “when”—these next two chapters address the “who” of the novel. While the story deals primarily with time, the aspect of “people” begins to incorporate value into the novel. Forster points out that all actors within a novel are inherently human or at least anthropomorphic. He draws a distinct line here between fiction and all other forms of art because only fiction allows and insists that the artist employ his connection to other people.

Forster pursues the question of how, precisely, the characters in a novel differ from real people. Real people have a hidden inner life that can only be known in a memoir or a historical account when the person chooses to allow that inner life to show on the surface. The novelist, however, creates the inner life of the character and can describe this inner life without the character revealing it. Fundamentally, the hidden inner workings of a character are intentionally created by the novelist in stark contrast to real people, whose inner workings are often incidental.

Forster moves to understand the character in a novel through five elements of human existence: “birth, food, sleep, love and death” (75).