Unit 3 · Topic 3.4

3.4 Significant events in a longer plot

A novel or play has many events, but some matter much more than others. You learn to pick out the significant ones, such as turning points, the climax and subplots that mirror the main plot, and to explain how each changes the characters, the conflict or the story's direction.

Key terms

significant event
turning point
climax
subplot
resolution

Events, episodes and scenes

A long story is made of many smaller units: scenes (one place, one stretch of time), encounters (characters meeting), episodes (a small story inside the bigger one). Each one either introduces part of the plot or develops it. Not all of them carry equal weight.

What makes an event significant

What makes an event matter is how it connects to the rest of the work, not how loud or dramatic it is. A quiet conversation can be more significant than a duel if it changes how a character sees everything.

To judge an event, ask three questions:

Does it change the conflict? It might start, sharpen, reverse or end the main struggle.
Does it change a character? It might cause a realization, a decision or a loss.
Does it change what the reader understands? It might reveal a secret, a motive or a hidden connection.

Turning points, climax and subplots

Subplots are worth special attention. In Hamlet, for example, Laertes also has a father killed and also seeks revenge, but he acts quickly and without doubt. The comparison makes Hamlet's hesitation stand out.

Term	What it is	Why it matters
Turning point	A moment that sends the story in a new direction	Often reveals something or forces a decision
Climax	The peak of the main conflict	Shows what the work's conflict was really about
Subplot	A secondary storyline	Can mirror or contrast the main plot, sharpening its meaning

Writing about a single event

Prompts and passages often focus on one scene. Place it in the whole work in a sentence or two, then spend your energy on what the event changes. Avoid retelling everything that led up to it.

Where to look for significant events

Significant events tend to come in a few familiar kinds, listed below. Repeated scenes are especially useful. If a novel opens and closes with a character at the same window or the same dinner table, compare the two moments. What's changed is usually what the work is about.

Arrivals and departures: someone new comes to town, or someone leaves for good.
Revelations: a secret, a letter, a confession or an overheard conversation.
Decisions: a character commits to a path they can't easily undo.
Reversals: a character's fortune flips from good to bad, or the reverse.
Repetitions: a scene that echoes an earlier one, with a key difference.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
A turning point that rewrites a character's story
In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1861), Pip, a poor orphan, suddenly receives a fortune from an unknown benefactor and moves to London to become a gentleman. He believes the rich Miss Havisham is his benefactor. Years later, the convict Magwitch, whom Pip helped as a frightened child, returns and announces: "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has done it!" He adds: "I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work." Why is this event a turning point?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify what changes outwardly. The source of Pip's money is a convict, not Miss Havisham. His position in society suddenly feels shaky.
2. Step 2: Identify what changes inwardly. Pip has been ashamed of his humble past; now his gentleman's life turns out to rest on the very kind of person he looked down on.
3. Step 3: Look at Magwitch's words. The parallel structure, "I lived rough, that you should live smooth," shows his sacrifice clearly.
4. Step 4: Explain what the event does to the whole novel: it forces Pip to rethink what being a gentleman means.
Answer: Model paragraph: Magwitch's announcement, "It's me wot has done it!", is the turning point of Great Expectations because it destroys the story Pip has been telling himself. Pip has believed that the wealthy Miss Havisham chose to raise him up, a belief that let him feel his rise was natural and deserved. Instead, his fortune comes from a convict, the kind of rough, poor person Pip has learned to be ashamed of. Magwitch's balanced phrases, "I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work," lay out the cost of Pip's comfort: someone else's hardship paid for it. From this moment the novel shifts from Pip's rise to his reckoning, as he begins to question what makes a person truly a gentleman.

Common mistakes

Choosing the most dramatic event instead of the most significant one. Ask which event changes the most.
Summarizing all the events leading up to a scene. Give the minimum context, then analyze.
Ignoring subplots. They often exist to comment on the main plot.

On the exam

Literary argument prompts sometimes ask you to focus on a single scene or moment. Choose one that clearly changes the character or conflict, so you have something to analyze.
Multiple-choice questions may ask how an episode "functions" in a passage. Think about what it changes or reveals.

Connected topics

Videos

"What is a Climax in Literature?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
AP® Eng Lit Unit 3 Speed Review (Structure)
UWorld College PrepWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Freytag's Pyramid / Plot Analysis by Shmoop
ShmoopWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
What is Freytag's Pyramid and how do I analyse it?
Stream EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 3.4 Significant events in a longer plot. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (looking around) I guess we'll go upstairs first—and then out to the barn and around there, (to the SHERIFF) You're convinced that there was nothing important here—nothing that would point to any motive.

SHERIFF: Nothing here but kitchen things.

(The COUNTY ATTORNEY, after again looking around the kitchen, opens the door of a cupboard closet. He gets up on a chair and looks on a shelf. Pulls his hand away, sticky.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Here's a nice mess.

(The women draw nearer.)

MRS PETERS: (to the other woman) Oh, her fruit; it did freeze, (to the LAWYER) She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fire'd go out and her jars would break.

SHERIFF: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about.

HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.

(The two women move a little closer together.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (with the gallantry of a young politician) And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (the women do not unbend. He goes to the sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and pouring it into a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it for a cleaner place) Dirty towels! (kicks his foot against the pans under the sink) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?

MRS HALE: (stiffly) There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: To be sure. And yet (with a little bow to her) I know there are some Dickson county farmhouses which do not have such roller towels. (He gives it a pull to expose its length again.)

MRS HALE: Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Ah, loyal to your sex, I see. But you and Mrs Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too.

MRS HALE: (shaking her head) I've not seen much of her of late years. I've not been in this house—it's more than a year.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: And why was that? You didn't like her?

MRS HALE: I liked her all well enough. Farmers' wives have their hands full, Mr Henderson. And then—

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Yes—?

MRS HALE: (looking about) It never seemed a very cheerful place.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: No—it's not cheerful. I shouldn't say she had the homemaking instinct.

MRS HALE: Well, I don't know as Wright had, either.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: You mean that they didn't get on very well?

MRS HALE: No, I don't mean anything. But I don't think a place'd be any cheerfuller for John Wright's being in it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I'd like to talk more of that a little later. I want to get the lay of things upstairs now. (He goes to the left, where three steps lead to a stair door.)

SHERIFF: I suppose anything Mrs Peters does'll be all right. She was to take in some clothes for her, you know, and a few little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Yes, but I would like to see what you take, Mrs Peters, and keep an eye out for anything that might be of use to us.

MRS PETERS: Yes, Mr Henderson.

(The women listen to the men's steps on the stairs, then look about the kitchen.)

MRS HALE: I'd hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticising.

(She arranges the pans under sink which the LAWYER had shoved out of place.)

MRS PETERS: Of course it's no more than their duty.

Susan Glaspell, Trifles (first performed 1916), from Plays (1920)

Question 1 of 4

Mrs. Hale's remark that she doesn't “think a place'd be any cheerfuller for John Wright's being in it” (paragraph 24) is significant chiefly because it

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade; and you must have asked who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the “natives” were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line.

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s twenty-four years ago come next February,” Harmon threw out between reminiscent pauses.

The “smash-up” it was—I gathered from the same informant—which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window. He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributing hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia—or Mrs. Zeena—Frome, and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his specific. These documents my neighbour would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master.

“It was a pretty bad smash-up?” I questioned Harmon, looking after Frome’s retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

“Wust kind,” my informant assented. “More’n enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box—also with a druggist’s label on it—which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone. “That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!”

Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“Somebody had to stay and care for the folks. There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his father—then his mother—then his wife.”

“And then the smash-up?”

Harmon chuckled sardonically. “That’s so. He had to stay then.”

“I see. And since then they’ve had to care for him?”

Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek. “Oh, as to that: I guess it’s always Ethan done the caring.”

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.”

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

Question 2 of 4

Paragraph 1 (“each time it was a different story”) chiefly prepares the reader to

Question 3 of 4

The “smash-up” is presented in the passage as

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say.

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), Chapter VI

Question 4 of 4

The arrival of Dan Cody's yacht is presented in the passage as

0 of 4 answered