Plot
The story centers on Hart, a young law student from Minnesota who attends Harvard Law School and becomes obsessed with one of his teachers, Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. Hart becomes an expert on Kingsfield's subject, contracts; he reads everything about the subject, including all of Kingsfield's papers, most of which are not on the reading list. He goes so far as to break into the law library to read Kingsfield's original law school notes. Hart becomes such an expert that Kingsfield asks him to contribute to a paper.
At the same time, he begins a relationship with Susan Field, who turns out to be Kingsfield's daughter. Susan stands aloof from the law-school rat-race and dismisses all the things Hart cares about most.
At the end of the term, Professor Kingsfield really means something to his students, but he still does not know their names; indeed, he appears to be unable to smile. For him, the class is only a group of people, the students simply names on a paper. He does not even recognize Hart after several encounters and classroom debates. After one incident, wherein Kingsfield asks Hart to leave the class, Hart says in front of the lecture hall, "You are a son of a bitch, Kingsfield," to which Kingsfield merely responded with "Mr. Hart! That is the most intelligent thing you've said all day. You may take your seat."
After much effort preparing for the final exam, Hart's grade is delivered to him, but he simply makes a paper airplane out of his final report card, and sends it sailing into the Atlantic Ocean without looking at it.
Read more about this topic: The Paper Chase (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)