Structure
Dunn and Morris list several methods that authors use to provide unity to the collection as a whole (the examples are theirs):
- the cycle focuses on a geographical area: The Country of the Pointed Firs, Dubliners, The Women of Brewster Place, Like Water for Chocolate
- the cycle focuses on a central protagonist: Cosmicomics, Winesburg, Ohio, The Woman Warrior, A Certain Lucas
- the cycle features a collective protagonist: In Our Time, Go Down, Moses, Love Medicine, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
- the cycle uses patterns to create coherence: Three Lives, Exile and the Kingdom, The Golden Apples, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
- the cycle focuses on story-telling: The Way to Rainy Mountain, Pricksongs & Descants, Lost in the Funhouse, How to Make an American Quilt
Read more about this topic: Short Story Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The question is still asked of women: “How do you propose to answer the need for child care?” That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: “If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?””
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, “Be tolerant—even of evil.” Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth’s criminals, “I disagree that it’s all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion.” Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“One theme links together these new proposals for family policy—the idea that the family is exceedingly durable. Changes in structure and function and individual roles are not to be confused with the collapse of the family. Families remain more important in the lives of children than other institutions. Family ties are stronger and more vital than many of us imagine in the perennial atmosphere of crisis surrounding the subject.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)