Questions tagged [plot-element]
Questions asking for an explanation of an element of the plot of a work of fiction.
50 questions
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What is happening here in The View from the Seventh Layer?
In "The View from the Seventh Layer," Kevin Brockmeier has an eponymous story about a woman named Olivia who ponders disappointment in her life. She clearly is trapped and feels as though ...
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In "An Equal Music," why did Michael think Julia was crying?
In section 4.1 of Vikram Seth's novel An Equal Music, the narrator (Michael) thinks:
It was when I mentioned the nightingale that Julia’s eyes filled so suddenly — surprisingly, but not unaccountably,...
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What was Reggie Carrington doing before entering the drawing room?
In Agatha Christie's "The Incredible Theft" (1937), Air Marshal George Carrington, his wife Julia, and son Reggie are guests at Charles, Lord Mayfield's house. Other members of the party ...
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Who does Clay Boyette meet at the end of "Fever Beach" by Carl Hiaasen?
At the end of chapter 26 of Fever Beach (2025) by Carl Hiaasen, a pointedly unnamed woman meets Clay Boyette (the father of the Matt Gaetz analogue in the book) at a tiki bar in Turks and Caicos. She ...
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In Williams's Stoner, what is being suggested about the relationship between Lomax and Walker?
Pursuant to the scene described in this previous question regarding John Williams's Stoner (1965), Dr Stoner votes to fail Charles Walker in his oral comprehensives. This causes Walker's doctoral ...
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In John Williams's novel Stoner, is the substitution of "Scottish" for "Scotch" deliberate?
In John Williams's campus novel Stoner (1965), the eponymous William Stoner is a professor of English literature. As part of his duties, he is one of the examiners for a doctoral student's oral ...
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The murderer's motives in Agatha Christie's Sad Cypress
This is Poirot's analysis at the end of the book:
I am a bit confused at that, because if Mrs. Welman died intestate, her money would have gone to Elinor Carlisle, rather than Mary Gerrard, as was ...
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Why were the characters so careless when they raided Dracula's house?
I recently read a version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was translated into an easier version for language learners. That book has around 80 pages so I assume it is quite abridged.
In that version, ...
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What was Danglars' plan for imprisoning Dantès in "The Count of Monte Cristo"?
In The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Danglars is jealous of his crewmate Dantès and denounces him to the magistrate Villefort as a Bonapartist. This leads to Villefort sending Dantès to ...
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Why did the star give the idea of suicide in "The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man" by Fyodor Dostoevsky?
In The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, there is this quote:
As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one ...
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How does one “shoot an arrow through all twelve axes” in the Odyssey?
In book 21 of the Odyssey, Penelope sets her suitors a contest:
“Hear me, ye proud wooers, who have beset this house to eat and drink ever without end, since its master has long been gone, nor could ...
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For what crime were Toadvine and David Brown executed in "Blood Meridian"?
Towards the end of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, the kid witnesses the execution of Toadvine and David Brown:
In June of that year he [the kid] was in Los Angeles quartered in a hostel that was ...
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Was Benedict Farley asleep on Thursday night in Agatha Christie's "The Dream"?
Poirot realized the Mr. Benedict Farley he was talking to at 9:30 pm on last Thursday night was not the real one, but a mountebank.
“Why did Mr. Farley not allow me to go into his own room that
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What did Kate whisper to old Lobbs, in Dickens' "The Parish Clerk"?
My favorite short story by Charles Dickens is "The Parish Clerk: A Tale of True Love", from chapter 17 of The Pickwick Papers. In the last paragraph but two, the narrator writes:
The old ...
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Why was Orlando exiled in the novel by Virginia Woolf?
At the start of chapter 2 of Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Orlando is exiled.
In the summer of that disastrous winter which saw the frost, the flood, the deaths of many thousands, and the complete ...
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