Step outline example,"The Ambitious Guest."

Step outline example
  Working Plot of "The Ambitious Guest."
  ¶ 1.
    The scene is a tavern located at the Notch in the White Hills.
    The time, a September night.
    The place is in danger from landslides and falling stones.
    The family--father, mother, grandmother, daughter and
    children--are gathered happily about the hearth.
  ¶ 2, 3.
    The tavern is on a well-frequented road.
  ¶ 4-7.
    A young stranger enters, looking rather travel-worn, but
    quickly brightens up at his warm reception.
  ¶ 8, 9.
    A stone rolls down the mountain side.
  ¶ 10.
    The guest, though naturally reticent, soon becomes familiar with
    the family.
  ¶ 11.
    The secret of the young man's character is high and abstracted
    ambition.
  ¶ 12.
    He is as yet unknown.
  ¶ 13, 14.
    He is sensible of the ludicrous side of his ambition.
  ¶ 15.
    The daughter is not ambitious.
  ¶ 16-19.
    The father's ambition is to own a good farm, to be sent to General
    Court, and to die peacefully.
  ¶ 20-23.
    The children wish for the most ridiculous things.
  ¶ 24-27.
    A wagon stops before the inn, but drives on when the landlord does
    not immediately appear.
  ¶ 28-31.
    The daughter is not really content.
  ¶ 32.
    The family picture.
  ¶ 33-37.
    The grandmother tells of having prepared her grave-clothes.
    Fears if they are not put on smoothly she will not rest easily.
  ¶ 38, 39.
    She wishes to see herself in her coffin.
  ¶ 40, 41.
    They hear the landslide coming.
  ¶ 42.
    All rush from the house and are instantly destroyed.
    The house is unharmed.
    The bodies are never found.
  ¶ 43, 44.
    Even the death of the ambitious guest is in doubt.
This method  enables you to crystalize
into ideas what were mere phantasms of the brain, to arrange your
thoughts in their proper order, and to condense or expand details
with a ready comprehension of the effect of such alterations upon the
general proportions of the story. It makes your purposed work
objective enough so that you can consider it with a coolness and
impartiality which were impossible while it was still in embryo in
your brain; and it often reveals the absurdity or impossibility of a
plan which had seemed to you most happy. I believe that the novice
can do no better than to put his every story to this practical test.
"THE AMBITIOUS GUEST"
(From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales.")
I. One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and
piled it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of
the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the image
of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting in
the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found
the "herb heart's-ease" in the bleakest spot of all New England. This
family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was
sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in the winter, giving
their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley
of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one, for a
mountain towered above their heads so steep that the stones would often
rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
2. The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all
with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and
lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were
glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
traveler whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
heralded his approach and waited as he was entering and went moaning
away from the door.
3. Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily
converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great
artery through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
throbbing between Maine on the one side and the Green Mountains and the
shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew up
before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but his
staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of
the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and,
if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a
kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those primitive
taverns where the traveler pays only for food and lodging, but meets
with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard,
therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family
rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to welcome some one
who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.
4. The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and
bleak road at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw
the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to
meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair with her apron to
the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile
placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest
daughter.
5. "Ah! this fire is the right thing," cried he, "especially when there
is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed, for the Notch
is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a
terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett."
6. "Then you are going toward Vermont?" said the master of the house as
he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
7. "Yes, to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant to
have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night but a pedestrian lingers along
such a road as this. It is no matter; for when I saw this good fire and
all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for
me and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you and make
myself at home."
8. The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair up to the fire
when something like a heavy footstep was heard without rushing down the
steep side of the mountain as with long and rapid strides, and taking
such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
guest held his by instinct.
9. "The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget
him," said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his head
and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and agree together
pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of refuge
hard by if he should be coming in good earnest."
10. Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of
bear's meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed
himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they
talked together as freely as if he belonged to their mountain-brood. He
was of a proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich
and great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door
and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the
household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the
pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth
which they had gathered when they very little thought of it from the
mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic
and dangerous abode. He had traveled far and alone; his whole life,
indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his
nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have
been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had
that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from the
world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a holy
place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic
sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart
before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with
the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the
kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
11. The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to
hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that,
obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,
though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should
gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace
the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded,
and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb
with none to recognize him.
12. "As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
with enthusiasm--"as yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the
earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you--that a nameless
youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise,
and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he? Whither did the
wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then let
Death come: I shall have built my monument."
13. There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid
abstracted reverie which enabled the family to understand this young
man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had
been betrayed.
14. "You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and
laughing at himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were
to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that
people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would
be a noble pedestal for a man's statue."
15. "It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl,
blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about
us."
16. "I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is
something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
turned that way, I might have felt just the same.--It is strange, wife,
how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain
never to come to pass."
17. "Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he
will do when he is a widower?"
18. "No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness.
"When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine too. But I was
wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton, or
some other township round the White Mountains, but not where they could
tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and
be called squire and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a
plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I
should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be
long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying
around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one,
with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let
people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian."
19. "There, now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire a
monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
memory in the universal heart of man."
20. "We're in a strange way to-night," said the wife, with tears in her
eyes. "They say it's a sign of something when folk's minds go
a-wandering so. Hark to the children!"
21. They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed
in another room, but with an open door between; so that they could be
heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught
the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in
wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when they came
to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his
brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
22. "I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he: "I want you and
father and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start
right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume."
23. Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm
bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the
Flume--a brook which tumbles over the precipice deep within the Notch.
24. The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along the road and
stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song which
resounded in broken notes between the cliffs, while the singers
hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
night.
25. "Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."
26. But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the
lash being soon applied, the travelers plunged into the Notch, still
singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
from the heart of the mountain.
27. "There, mother!" cried the boy, again; "they'd have given us a ride
to the Flume."
28. Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a
night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the
daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath
that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle
to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked quickly around
the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger
asked what she had been thinking of.
29. "Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only I felt
lonesome just then."
30. "Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secret of yours? For
I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and
complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
feelings into words?"
31. "They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
into words," replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
32. All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in
their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could
not be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his,
and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by
simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a
maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain
of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their dwelling
among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred
region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were passing. To
chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their fire till
the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a
scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly
and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the children
peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's frame of strength,
the mother's subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth, the
budding girl, and the good old grandma, still knitting in the warmest
place.
33. The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy
was the next to speak.
34. "Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones.
You've been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one thing
and another till you've set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what should an
old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes
to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you."
35. "What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.
36. Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle
closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her
grave-clothes some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a
muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her
wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred
to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if anything were
amiss with a corpse--if only the ruff were not smooth or the cap did
not set right--the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the clods, would
strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made
her nervous.
37. "Don't talk so, grandmother," said the girl, shuddering.
38. "Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet
smiling strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children,
when your mother is dressed and in the coffin,--I want one of you to
hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
myself and see whether all's right?"
39. "Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
stranger youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking and
they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
ocean, that wide and nameless sepulcher?"
40. For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the
minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the
roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated
group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance
and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or power to
move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips:
41. "The slide! The slide!"
42. The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and
sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in contemplation
of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
quitted their security and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of ruin. Just
before it reached the house the stream broke into two branches, shivered
not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the
road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the
thunder of that great slide had ceased to roar among the mountains the
mortal agony had been endured and the victims were at peace. Their
bodies were never found.
43. The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
chimney up the mountainside. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would
shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left
separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made to
shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has been
told far and wide, and will forever be a legend of these mountains.
Poets have sung their fate.
44. There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger
had been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared
the catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were
sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth
with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person utterly
unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be
solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt,--whose was the
agony of that death moment?
THE END
The facts upon which Hawthorne built "The Ambitious Guest" are
these:--The White Hills of which he speaks (¶ 1) are the famous White
Mountains of New Hampshire; the Notch (¶ 1) is the real name of a real
mountain pass, which is just as he describes it; the Flume (¶ 22) is a
waterfall not far from the Notch; the valley of the Saco (¶ 1) is really
where he places it. The references to Portland (¶ 3), Bartlett (¶ 5),
Burlington (¶ 7), Bethlehem and Littleton (¶ 18) are all references to
real places in the vicinity. At the point where Hawthorne locates his
story there actually was a mountain tavern called the Willey House, and
a modern inn stands on the spot to-day. Concerning the catastrophe which
he describes I found the following account:
    "Some time in June--before the great 'slide' in August,
    1826--there came a great storm, and the old veteran, Abel
    Crawford, coming down the Notch, noticed the trees slipping
    down, standing upright, and, as he was passing Mr. Willey's he
    called and informed him of the wonderful fact. Immediately, in a
    less exposed place, Mr. Willey prepared a shelter to which to
    flee in case of immediate danger; and in the night of August
    28th, that year, he was, with his family, awakened by the
    thundering crash of the coming avalanche. Attempting to escape,
    that family, nine in number, rushed from the house and were
    overtaken and buried alive under a vast pile of rocks, earth,
    trees and water. By a remarkable circumstance the house remained
    uninjured, as the slide divided about four rods back of the
    house (against a high flat rock), and came down on either side
    with overwhelming power."[27]
The book goes on to state further that the family consisted of the
father and mother, five children--the eldest a girl of thirteen--and two
hired men. The bodies of the parents, the oldest and youngest children,
and the two hired men were found.
It is probable that Hawthorne derived his information from the
newspapers, though he may have heard the story by word of mouth, for
there is little doubt that he actually visited the spot where the
catastrophe occurred. But the bald facts of the case, however gained,
are essentially as we have them here, and that is sufficient for our
purpose.
In writing his story Hawthorne took several liberties with the facts.
He made no change in the location because even he could not improve
upon the scene for such a story. He changed the month from August to
September (¶ 1) to make plausible, perhaps, the rain necessary for such
a slide, and to make seasonable the bitter wind which he introduces. He
omitted all names to add to the air of unsolved mystery that haunts the
story. He introduced the guest (¶ 4) and the grandmother (¶ 1), increased
the age of the daughter (¶ 1), retained the parents and younger children
(¶ 1) and omitted the hired men to suit the requirements of his story. He
omitted the warning but retained the establishment of a place of refuge
(¶ 9) to heighten the climax. He used the flight from the house (¶ 42)
because it just suited his purpose. He retained the strange preservation
of the house (¶ 42) to increase the air of mystery, and to intensify the
tragedy by making it appear in a manner unnecessary. He suppressed the
finding of any of the bodies (¶ 42) to aid the plausibility of his
narrative, and to increase the pathos of the guest's death.
Compare carefully the account given by Spaulding and the story of
Hawthorne, for you have here an excellent illustration of the difference
between the commonplace recital of facts and their transformation into a
work of art. Spaulding's relation is a true story, but Hawthorne's is
literature.
The short story plot, and an analysis of the ambitious guest
Category:Introduction