Our existence is spread out over time. A song, for example, does not exist all at once. It is a sequence of sounds. A baseball game, an education, a friendship or a career - none of these exist at one moment; all are sequences of events. A random sequence of sounds does not constitute a tune, and a random sequence of athletic incidents on a baseball field does not constitute a baseball game. A series of unrelated happenings has no meaning as such, though the isolated parts may have individual meanings. Faced with sequences with no meaning, I may begin to wonder whether the world has gone mad. Or is it I that have gone mad? In any case, madness is the correlative of lack of meaning. The writer Franz Kafka was a master at conveying the feeling brought on by a sequence of apparently random, unrelated - and to that extent meaningless - events. We find meaning in a sequence of events when we relate them to each other in some way and thereby unify them. When I listen to a melody I am aware of several notes at once although I physically hear them only one at a time. Unless I put them together in some way, hear them in relation to each other, I will hear only unrelated notes rather than a melody. There are two general ways in which a sequence of events can be unified. The first is to see the events as steps toward a final end or goal. Various parts of a trip from New York to Chicago make sense as steps towards the destination. Many hours studying a textbook make sense as steps towards passing a final examination qualifying one to practice a profession. The second kind of unity in a sequence of events is to find some pattern in them. We do this when we listen to a piece of music. We don't listen to each individual note of a musical performance simply as a way to reach the final note. The same is true of the events in a novel. True, the events of the novel lead onward towards the finale, but the point of the novel is not merely to get to the last page. The events recounted in the novel form a discernible pattern based on such things as character, suspense and the working out of human problems.
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