Combined and Reduced Characters in "The Cat Jumps"

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Those of you who read my complaint about an August Derleth story crowded by too many characters most likely thought for a moment, and then said to yourselves, "Wait a minute, Dillon, what the hell are you talking about? What about Elizabeth Bowen? What about 'The Cat Jumps'?"

I agree with you! What about "The Cat Jumps?" Eight pages long, with at least thirteen characters (a few merely mentioned, but most of them active on the page), it somehow lets me process all of its people, and it keeps their story-functions clear.

Why does Bowen succeed where August Derleth fails?

In the opening pages, Bowen sets up two couples (the Bentleys, the Wrights), and establishes them immediately as two groups in opposition; in effect, she reduces four people into a clearly-divided pair, and makes their difference a central point of the story.

On page three, the Wrights welcome several guests. Here also, Bowen sets up two groups in opposition: Muriel (nervous, imaginative, and by the standards of everyone else, morbid), and the rest, who form a single unit of rational intellectuals not at all prey to the fears of Muriel.

(You could take this further, and say that we have only three groups to keep in mind: Muriel, the Bentleys, and everyone else who is unafraid and unconcerned.)

What we have, then, are thirteen people, but reduced into clear groups with clear differences between them, so that the reader has no need to stop and think about who is related to whom, or how so-and-so must not be confused with someone else. At the same time, the opposition of these groups, and their differing mental energies, turn the wheels of the plot.

The lesson, here, is that a crowded mess in one story can become a driving force in a second.

This, too: Almost any potential downfall in a story can be avoided or even justified by a writer's intentions and a writer's craft. Never underestimate the healing magic of skill.