Traditional Structure Essay

Literature has become a big part of every tradition and culture in the world. Each country and nation has their own styles and perspectives of how they should portray and interpret literature. However, regardless of where literature is made and under what perspective it was conceptualized, these all follow certain rules and structures that makes them distinguishable literature works. The structure of a literature is also known as its “plot”. The plot functions as the backbone of the literature, which establishes its foundation. It helps tie together all the elements of the story, in order to make it unified and coherent.
For this activity, the literature that was analyzed was the story entitled “Crazy Eights”. The main characters in the story are Benny and Connie. The story begins with Connie entering her house, and getting startled seeing Benny waking up in the dark as he was sleeping. Analyzing the flow of the events in the story, it can be observed that the play follows a causal plot structure. This is because the story was arranged in a way that the succeeding events that unfolded were the effects of the previous events that happened. For example, in the first part, because of her train being stuck, Connie ended up coming home later, which then led to Benny climbing up Connie’s fireplace just so he could enter her house and cook for her.
Now let us dwell further on the other structural components of the story. One concept that could be used to make the analysis more systematic, is Freytag’s Pyramid which consists of the story’s exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, and falling action. First, the story’s exposition of course, can be found in the beginning of the story. This is where the relationship of the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the past events in the story have been narrated and established. The next would be the inciting incident of the story, or the part of the story the disturbs the balance and provokes conflict. In the case of Crazy Eights, it is the moment Cliff shouts and enters the scene. There has already been an established balance in the flow of events between Benny and Connie, but this was disrupted because by the role of Cliff. The third component to be analyzed is the rising action of the story, which begins when Connie begins to question Benny’s limits of not allowing her to talk to Cliff. Going back to the inciting incident, Benny was about to say something to Connie when Cliff interrupted. This leads to the impending conflict between the three characters. The story reaches its climax when Connie finally confronts Benny about his actions, and why he is insisting that it was his responsibility to look after Connie. Connie then reiterates that Benny does not have any responsibility to do so, and that he should not overstep his limits. Finally, the falling action of the story begins as when Benny finally decided to leave Connie’s place and go home, leaving her and Cliff in the house. They then begin to play cards, and Cliff teases Connie to Benny. This ends the story of the Crazy Eight.