Andrei, along with such lesser representatives of the communist system as Syerov, Sonia, and Victor. Had it been “Kira against the state,” the story would have been plotless.
Anthem is a psychological fantasy, not a full-scale indictment of collectivism. The collective is brought in only to explain why the hero is in the predicament of not having the concept I. Had I introduced a plot, I would have taken the story away from the main subject, because the issue of what happens in your mind when you lack a certain concept is not an action theme.
In my short story “The Simplest Thing in the World” [see The Romantic Manifesto], the hero sits at a desk, struggles to write something, and decides that he cannot. The story takes place in his mind; it is strictly an illustration of the psychological process of creation. It is as plotless as anything could be.
Let us examine a few more plot-themes.
The oldest and tritest is that of the prostitute with a heart of gold. Why is it so popular? Because a prostitute has cut herself off from all human values. Her profession clashes with any other value she might want—respectability, a career, anything—and the worst clash comes if she falls in love. Then a dramatic story is an immediate possibility.
Usually, the prostitute falls in love, decides to abandon her profession, and then struggles not to let the man find out the truth about her past. This is the pattern of Anna Christie, Anna Lucasta, and many lesser-known stories. The conflict is resolved in one of two ways: the man always finds out the truth, and then he either accepts it and forgives her (a happy ending), or he denounces her and commits suicide, and she jumps out of a window (a tragic ending). This is all that most people have done with this particular conflict.
To see how the conflict can be improved, ask yourself how one can make it harder for the heroine. Suppose her lover knows of her past and has forgiven it, but then she discovers that if he marries her, he will ruin his career. He will never be able to succeed at what he wants if his wife is a former prostitute. He will not give her up, so she has to make him give her up, which she can do only by pretending that she is still a prostitute. She has to hurt him terribly and make him despise her—for his own sake. Now you have Camille, or La Traviata, one of the best, most tragic, and most dramatic plot structures ever devised (which is why that story will live forever and why there are so many bad imitations of it).
Take another trite plot-theme: the woman who sells herself to a man she does not love for the sake of the man whom she does love. Usually, as in the opera Tosca, some villain who knows of her love tells her that if she sleeps with him, he will spare her lover. The heroine makes the sacrifice and then has to hide the fact from her lover. This is a good, but simple, one-line conflict.
Now ask yourself how one can make it harder for the characters. Suppose the woman sells herself, not to a villain who forces her into it, but to a man who really loves her, whom she respects and whose love she takes seriously. He does not want to buy her, and she must hide from him that it is a sale—but she has to sell herself to save the man she really loves, a man who happens to be the particular person the buyer hates most. This is a much more dramatic conflict—and it is the plot-theme of We the Living.
I have asked myself: How can I make the conflict worse for everyone involved? By complicating the conflict, I have made a standard theme original.
The more conflicts involved in the same action situation, and the more serious the values for the participants, the better the dramatic situation and the tighter the plot you can construct from it.
Once an author starts to develop his plot-theme, he has to make the events proceed from that plot-theme. For instance, in Notre-Dame de Paris, the priest has the girl arrested and condemned to death, then offers her escape if she will give herself to him. This is a dramatization in action of the plot-theme conflict. Suppose the priest was not instrumental in having the girl arrested, but merely stood on the