Sondheim in a Tree

"It strikes me that's what technique must be: the control of the information that
flows from a play to its audience; and in particular the ordering of the information."

--Tom Stoppard

 I want to talk about point of view in narration. It might help first if we think of a novel as a large packet of information, just like the data packets governed by the hypertext transfer protocol (http) on the internet, which delivers data, order, and destination-- which we can translate for our purposes as story, plot, and audience. 

Plot--the ordering, revealing or withholding of information in a story--is especially important in a time-based medium like drama, but also in novels, unless the reader elects to subvert the author's intent by reading the ending first, say, or the author subverts it as in The Dictionary of the Khazars (by Milorad Pavic), wherein he invites the reader to assemble the story in any order they like.  

Point of view directs the information spigot in sometimes subtle ways. First it can be can be additive, as in Toni Morrison's Jazz, with multiple narrators slowly bringing the truth into focus, or or subtractive with an unreliable narrator, sometimes severely restrictive, as in the Benjy Compson section of The Sound and the Fury. Even multiple narrators can be subtractive when the different narrators accounts clash so much that we  are left at sea.

Which brings us to Someone in a Tree, a tour de force musical number from Stephen Sondheim's Broadway show Pacific Overtures. The show is about Japan's (unwilling) opening to western trade in the late 19th century. Under threat of force, the emperor's representatives set up a meeting with the Americans to devise a treaty. We begin with the Reciter (the uber-narrator of the play) bemoaning the fact that there is no authentic Japanese account of what was said that day in the treaty house. An old man appears.

[OLD MAN]
Pardon me, I was there.

[RECITER]
You were where?

[OLD MAN]
At the treaty house.

Wonderful! But it turns out that the old man--who was then quite young--was perched in a tree, able to see, but not hear what went on. And his memory has become clouded by time. To underscore this, we're introduced to the old man as a young boy, whose comments will form a contrapuntal narrative. He demands of his older self:

[BOY]
Tell him what I see!

And of course there are discrepancies in their memories:

[OLD MAN]
Some of them have gold on their coats.

[BOY]
One of them has gold—

He was younger then.

Which is the truer memory? The one closer in time to the events, or the one with an experienced adult's understanding of their import?

But then Sondheim adds another thread to his fabric:

[WARRIOR]
Pardon me, I am here
If you please, I am also here—

--a warrior placed underneath the floor of the treaty house, waiting for a signal to jump out and slay the Americans if they draw weapons. He can hear what is being said. And he's speaking not from memory, but from the actual event. Now we're getting somewhere.

Except we aren't. Because he's not listening to the words spoken, he's listening to movement, he's listening for his cue to act:

[WARRIOR]
First I hear a creak and a thump
Now I hear a clink
Then they talk a bit...
Many times they shout when they speak
Other times they think
Or they argue it...

But when they combine their narratives, is there light shed?

[BOY]
Someone reads a list
From a box

[WARRIOR]
Someone talks of laws

[OLD MAN]
Then they fan a bit

[BOY]
Someone bangs a fist

[WARRIOR]
Someone knocks

[OLD MAN]
Now there was a pause

[OLD MAN, BOY & WARRIOR]
Then they argue it

No. 

But they insist on the importance, the primacy of their involvement in the event, even though peripheral:

[BOY]
And there's someone in a tree—

[OLD MAN]
—Or the day is incomplete

[OLD MAN & BOY]
Without someone in a tree
Nothing happened here

The song becomes a commentary on itself, on the solipsism inherent in narration, and the fictional nature of memory. It shows that the information flow can never be complete, therefore choice of narrator is critical for shaping the story. Plot is tightly interwoven with point of view. All narrators are unreliable. Even a camera has a fixed position. The omniscient narrator can only tell you what the author decides is salient, not every detail the reader might judge necessary. 

So how do we choose a narrator? First person provides immediacy, placing the reader on the protagonist's shoulder, but it cuts us off from any wider view; we can be too close to action, clouding judgment. We can describe the same events from many characters' points of view, but it sometimes tells us more about the various characters than the events.

But should it be the goal of narration to make everything clear? Or is ambiguity  desirable? (Clarity of communication is always a virtue, but thematic ambiguity can make a reading experience richer, involving the reader in its resolution.

In the same talk quoted above, Stoppard also says "Art which stays news is, in Ezra Pound's phrase, is art in which the question 'what does it mean?' has no correct answer."

 In the end, devising a protocol which will deliver data in the most efficient order to reach our destination, we must light upon the point of view that best correlates to theme, to the central questions we set out to ask--but not necessarily answer.

Sondheim's favorite of all his songs, 

Someone in a Tree.