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‘Satiable Curiosity

Hidden stuff, expectation, mystery, revelation. 

In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn’t pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant—a new Elephant—an Elephant’s Child—who was full of ‘satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. -

Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories

All right, put your hand down at the back.  I can see you’ve got questions.  Hang on, I haven’t got to that bit yet. 

Who?”  What?”  “Why?”

Please don’t interrupt…

“Who is this handsome new character who suddenly appears in Act 2 of your play.  Or why did his wife leave him in chapter 13 of your novel?” you may be asking.  “what significance does that gun have you’ve left lying on the coffee table?” “Why did the bears leave the door unlocked whilst they went out?” “What sort of crazy bear behaviour is that?” 

Suddenly I feel that your questions are propelling the tale along.  And dragging me along with you as I try to give suitable answers.  You have taken ownership of the story.

But, of course, I want you to take ownership.  I want you to ask these questions.  Not out loud of course, Shhh. I can’t deal with three hundred of you at once. And, if I’m any good as a story teller I will be giving you an answer the moment the question begins to form in your mind. I am manipulating you to follow a path that I have laid out for you before hand.

And frankly, if you are questioning the motivation of a family of bears who live in a cottage, sleep in beds  and eat porage for breakfast, then I really think that part of my work is done.  

But to take you further on my adventure I must make sure that your questions, conscious or unconscious, are the ones I want you to ask.  Your instinctive curiosity will drive you to look for patterns.  I can play with this instinct and use little tricks like repetitions, rhymes and alliterations and the rule of three.  Three bears, three bowls of porage, three beds.  Your brain distinguishes the pattern and you gallop ahead of me.  You feel superior because you think you know where this is going. If I tell you what happened to Goldilocks in two of the armchairs, you should be curious to know what will happen in the third.   Three brothers set out to find their fortunes.  The first is very brave but stupid. The second is greedy but stupid and the third one sets out with no money but is clever.  You spot a pattern.  You have heard it hundreds of times before. If I tell you what calamaties befall the first two brothers You already think you know what will become of the third brother. Obviously, third brother the weedy one who uses his brain wins the princess.  And there will be some sort of satisfaction in that resolution for you. This is restating the world, not as it generally is but as you would like it or hope it to be.  Weedy brother wins princess.  We can all aspire to that can’t we?  But, - spoiler alert - because I, or my narrator, are underhand cheats, the answer I supply may not be the truth.

I can, should I choose, subvert the ending by making the Princess a spoilt brat that brings misery to the third brother living out his life as the king of some distant suburban landscape.  Am I being unkind? To him and to you. This twist may bring a fresh assessment of the world.  It might make you groan in disappointment or chuckle that you have been outwitted. Whatever.  But it is the rhythm and repetition of the rule of three and your inevitable curiosity that enables me to play this game with your expectation.

There is a very good reason for the Rule of Three.  We notice things that happen in threes.  We recognise the pattern. Jokes are told in three parts:  “An Englishman, an Irishman and a Horse go into a bar…” Quests require the overcoming of three obstacles. The tension in the story rises steadily and incrementally but without becoming tedious. Adventures come in three parts with the third providing the pay off or transformation. If you want to be clever about it, you could say it was Hegelian in structure.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Or more probably, statement of a theme, restatement and then variation.  Or something along those lines.  It is, and here I venture into deep waters, hard wired into our brains.  And provides the foundation of Marxian analysis of the world.  OK, stop there Let’s just say that the rule of three, like Baby Bear’s Porage, is just right.

I keep six honest serving-men

 (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling Just So Stories

your insatiable curiosity is the whole mechanism that keeps the gossip thing alive.  You just can’t bear to miss out.  Not now. Not after putting all this effort in. Not after getting to know the characters in the story and perhaps beginning to understand the character of the narrator, as well. You just have to know what happens next.  Will there be some resolution?  Is there any point to what you’re telling me?

If you’re not asking questions, you’re not paying attention and, as I have suggested previously, if you’re not paying attention we are not going to progress very far.

One way, I can get you asking questions is to put a character to one side for a chapter or two.  “What happened to so and so?”  You ask. “What is she up to now?”

And to keep ahead of you I’m going to prompt you by having the questions embedded in the story itself. “Molly wondered what this strange building was looming in the distance.”  Or “What’s happened here, said Wilson to himself surveying the twisted wreckage of the alien spacecraft. ” Questions, in short whatever their source, are the driving wheels of the machine.  And I must pull the levers between the questions asked and the expectation you may have of the answers.

Ken Campbell in conversation with Andrew Clover said “For the duration of a well-told story, it’s like life with a purpose, with a meaning which is clear.  That’s why we like mysteries, isn’t it?”

All audiences love a riddle. I deliberately mislead you as to the true nature of someone I am talking about.  They have unrevealed depths of depravity or goodness.  They have mysterious pasts.  At a suitable point in the narrative I can reveal the truth of this character (as I or my narrator) might see it. And you are excited by, what is in effect, a piece of gossip.  “Oh, I see now.” You say in wonderment.  “Ooo, that explains everything.”  And you are delighted with this revelation.  Suddenly, the true nature of Mr Darcy’s character becomes apparent.  It’s important that this character must be true and consistent throughout or you feel cheated.  The pattern must be obeyed. Jane Austen thus has given you plenty of clues but like the great Marvo the magician has focused your attention elsewhere.  Naughty Jane.

The idea of a riddle to be solved is part of every story. It is part of the story telling tradition going back via the Anglo-Saxon Bards, the Greek poets, Chinese myths. Every form of story-telling since it all began, in fact. It is the satisfying pay off, the twist in the tale that keeps us hooked in.  And it works because it completes a jig saw.  It fills in a tiny piece that makes the whole point of the story come clear.  And this is true of any story. Not just of murder mysteries or thrillers.  Even about my Auntie Rose’s friend who kept a jellyfish farm.  Or the little girl with golden hair walking through the woods.

It is true about life itself.  It is perhaps an answer to the question of why stories at all.  You and I are seeking some sort of resolution to the big riddles of life and maybe the stories allow us to ask these questions that we can’t frame in the chaotic, messy world we find ourselves in.  We’ll talk about The who where what why and  when in the next phase of this journey.