Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Plot: An Overview of the Stories

"I was surprised when the mailman phoned the Peebleses' place in the evening and asked for me. He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich, where some well-known movie was on, I forget now what. So I said yes, and I went out with him for two years and he asked me to marry him..."

The same general pattern is visible in the three pieces of literature we are discussing this week. In these stories, the main action and majority of the storyline does not allude to the ending.  While much of "How I Met My Husband" discusses the narrator's relationship with Chris Watters, he is not her husband. Surprisingly she ends up with the mailman. In "Interpreter of Maladies" most of the story focuses on the narrator's affection and infatuation with a girl who is telling him her problems, but the ultimate message of the story is the woman's guilt about her affair. In "A Rose for Emily", the story does relate Emily's descent into depression, but the reader would never expect that she had mummified her one-time boyfriend. Though much of the information given in the story seems unimportant to the ultimate plot or ending, it is this unexpected twist that makes the stories so interesting and unique. Each story begins as though it were a typical love and heartbreak story, but each one ends in a different and unexpected way. That is what makes the stories so enjoyable.

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