Leaving out pieces of plot is a crucial part of writing, and it is a shame that it is not practiced as much as it ought to be. Many well-known bestsellers have been made famous through their extravagant plots and narratives, but one of the least appreciated mechanics of writing is that of omission. Some wonder about how a story can possibly be improved by leaving out details, and how confusing the readers could possibly be a good way to entice them or tell a story, but on the contrary, omission of these details allows the reader to fill in the blanks with their imagination, forcing them to apply critical thinking and inducing a feeling of accomplishment when they produce theories as to transpired between two events. Theorizing is an amazing tool that encourages readers to become immersed in the story and feel like they are part of the tale they are reading, some such epics being those of the books A Streetcar Named Desire and The Great Gatsby by Tennessee Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald, respectively. The first of the tales in which omission can be found as a driving force to the story is that of the young Jay Gatsby, a ‘New Money’ (First Generation Wealth) young man of considerable status, who lives an extravagant life in the West Egg; hosting parties for complete strangers during the era of the “Roaring Twenties” (1920s).
To kick things off, The Great Gatsby follows Jay Gatsby, a mysterious figure whom many seldom laid eyes on, host of many celebrations in what we now know as the Great Neck Peninsula on Long Island. The story follows along Gatsby’s exploits through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the narrator, playing a sort of friend to Gatsby in the story. The story revolves around Gatsby’s reclusive behavior and eccentric mannerisms as he displays his bon vivant lifestyle through the first half of the book. The story escalates during the latter portion of the novel, when Gatsby reveals he has been in love with Daisy Buchannan, wife of Tom Buchannan, who is an “Old Money” (Inherited Wealth) elite with a nigh-militant demeanor, and a friend of Nick. As events unfold, the story ends in tragedy, but the omitted passage occurs a bit earlier. What makes this piece of plot before the reveal so interesting is that Gatsby has never shown his love for Daisy outright before, and the reader, with today’s understanding of romance, would have likely been somewhat oblivious to Gatsby’s infatuation until the latter part of the novel. The effectiveness of the omission of Gatsby’s love for Daisy plays its part right from the start of the book, a feat by any standard that Fitzgerald managed sneaking out such an important detail; the whole driving force of the story. Readers, along with the characters themselves, are taken for a journey as they ride along to figure out why Gatsby throws the parties he does, the characters spouting rumors about him being anything from a war general to a scheming businessman, tired of his rich life, and soon after the reader themselves starts formulating ideas about who he might be and why he hosts grand celebrations. All these mysteries surrounding the man, along with the rumors building on his character, contribute to this being one of the staples of American Literature, mixing the rendition of the past with a mystery-filled adventure of a novel, all because the story left out Gatsby’s love for Daisy, and his upbringing, from the start leaving the reader hungry for knowledge of ‘why?’. But The Great Gatsby is not the only work of literature to be impacted so strongly by a redaction of information; that title falls as well on the story of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The play tells a story of Stanley Kowalski, a hotheaded man’s man, with his wife, Stella; a sweet woman of timid nature, weak and vulnerable to Stanley’s uncontrolled rage. Stanley is a man well into his thirties, having been an army engineer in World War II, and currently working as a Factory Parts Salesman. The story follows the daily life of the pair until Stella’s sister, Blanche, arrives. Once Blanche makes herself a part of their lives, Stanley begins to grow increasingly reckless, unleashing violent behavior and erratic outbursts directed at his friends, wife, and sister-in-law for nearly every little infraction he spots. The story builds up to one night, when Stella is away from home. Stanley and Blanche have an argument, and Blanche retreats to the bathroom in an effort to elude Stanley, but Stanley won’t have it; kicking and screaming, he carries Blanche to the bedroom and the scene cuts to the curtains. The play refuses to state it outright, but the scene left out was that in which Stanley rapes Blanche. The reader is placed in stasis for a moment, blissfully unaware of what transpired, and stunned upon realizing what had occurred. From there on in, the story takes a much darker turn as Stanley descends along a spiral of violence, eventually striking, which causes a falling out as the story wraps up shortly after. The omission here was a small one, but the effect of it was shocking on a scale grand enough to entirely alter future readings upon having this event stuck in the back of the reader’s mind. In this, Streetcar Named Desire gives another ingenious use of omission in order to affect how we interpret the story, albeit this one was more sudden and caused a greater shift in the tone of the narrative, so much so that, as mentioned before, the one scene that was left out changed the entire book’s meaning as the story unfolds.
To fold up this essay, or bring on the conclusion, while many ways to improve stories and attract readers exist, the use of omitting certain elements and scenes from the story can prove to be just as effective when setting up a twist or explanation for the plot, if not more, than other literary devices. This astounding use of cutting details from the narrative has been shown through the stories of Jay Gatsby and Stanley Kowalski in The Great Gatsby and Streetcar Named Desire to great effect, morphing their storylines into something entirely new, while stimulating the reader with ‘food for thought’. Overall it was entrancing and very immersive to be given holes in plot to do detective work on in an effort to figure out how the gap fits into itself in decoding the events in these tales, and those to come.