Plot
The story concerns a nation that constructs a deadly amusement park to remedy its overpopulation problems. In charge of this operation is the Populace Control. People who win a ticket are sent to the carnival on a bus; cars would become a problem as many visitors do not return. Passengers who die are placed in black plastic bags and thrown into a mass burial pit. It focuses on a young boy (Jerry) who wins a ticket to the titular Carnival, much to his mother's grievance. It is revealed that Jerry is obnoxious and has a sense of invulnerability knowing that the possibility of living that day was 1 in 8. After he arrives, he realizes the park's true nature while on a ride called the "Thunder Clapper" that electrocutes some of its passengers, including the person next to him. The story ends as the protagonist is being thrown off a ride called the "Whirl-Away" to his death and the body is caught in one of the black bags.
Read more about this topic: The Carnival (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)