Medium Specificity

A   Jonathan Lives a normal life. Nothing Exciting ever happend to him
      B   One day, an inciting incident happend in Jonathans life. An antagonist, force of nature,                              and character flaw caused a big conflict in Jonathans life.
          C   This incident started to escalate
               D The incident continued to escalate for quite some time
                    E  As the incident grew, so did Jonathans character. His flaws began to vanish
                        F However as he grew, the antagonist continued to oppress him.
                           G As the antagonist oppressed him, so did the forces of nature.
                               H Despite these hardships Jonathan worked hard to overcome them
                                  I One day as he was working hard against all these forces, a huge crisis emerged.
                                    J The antagonist pulled ahead of Jonathan in the race to be the victor of the story
                                        K As the antagonist did so, Jonathan notices his character flaws.
                                            L The forces of Nature work against him.
                                               M Jonathan has a huge test to prove himself worthy of the victors title
                                                    N Through the test, Jonathan triumphantly wins the victor.
                                                M' Jonathan again has another huge test to prove his worthiness
                                            L' Because he doesn't pass it, this leads to a crisis.
                                        K' The Antagonist once again exposes his character flaws
                                    J ' The Antagonist becomes the victor of the story
                                  I' This led to a huge crisis as Jonathan worked hard to overcome them
                               H' Jonathan worked hard to overcome the crisis, but in vain.
                           G' The forces of nature oppressed him just as much as the antagonist was.
                         F' As Jonathan continued to be oppressed, his character shrank.
                      E' Ultimately the incident at the beginning caused Jonathans flaws to resurface
                   D'  The incident descalated for quite some time.
               C'   The incident stopped growing.
             B'   The inciting incident vanished.
          A'   Jonathan is back to the same normal life he lived at the beginning of the story.

Artist Statement

For my medium specificity I chose to explore a chiasm narrative. These narratives are found in ancient hebrew texts. My piece above puts traditional story telling elements into the format of a chiasm.  

In "Show and tell" the author tells the history of the gulf between pictures and words and how over time the gap vanished. Just like people in the past perceived the role of pictures and words differently, so did they with narratives. A chaism is a great example of this. In ancient hebrew texts chaisms have a unique way of telling a theme. 

The narrative of Jonah is a great example of a chaism narrative. Jonah starts out not wanting to obey Gods command to preach to the people of Nineveh. After running from God on the seas, he is swallowed by a whale. While he is in the whale, he is humbled and decides to do what God commanded him to do. After he preaches to the people of Nineveh and they repent, Jonah becomes angry because he is envious of the Lords mercy on the people. He leaves the city and decides to die in the desert just outside the city. God plants a tree by Jonah to shade him. The next day, God destroys the tree with worms. Jonah becomes more angry and wants to die. The narrative ends with God trying to teach Jonah. In this narrative Jonah struggles until he is humbled to the point where he aligns his will with Gods when he is in the whale. However when the chaism reaches its peak when the people of Nineveh repent, Jonah becomes envious, and becomes prideful. The narrative finishes with him having nothing and being prideful, similar to the state he is in at the beginning of the narrative.

I feel that a chaism narrative is a unique way in which to tell a story because most modern narratives show the progression of man where chaisms show the progression and digression of man. It combines comedy and tragedy into one story. I feel that an audience can learn valuable lessons from seeing one character progress and the digress back to their original state. The chiasmus narrative can also be inverted, having the character start out good and happy, digress to a low point in the story and then, be restored to the same happy norm at the beginning of the story(The story of Job is a great example of this).  

To sum it up, chaisms are one of the many forgotten ways of communicating a theme to an audience.