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Closure In The Outsiders

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Closure in a narrative is when the narrative ends in a way that satisfies the audiences expectations and answers all questions raised throughout the story. In “The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative”, by H. Porter Abbott, Closure is broken down to expectations and questions. Closure at the level of expectation is when we are anticipating what will happen in the story. We recognize patterns of events taking place and form expectations for what the outcome may be. When these expectations are met, it provides closure. Closure at the level of question is when we are looking for answers. Throughout a narrative, questions are formed and we are using the information from the narrative to best answer these questions. Without satisfying expectations …show more content…

Hinton. “The Outsiders” is a story that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Like most successful novels, the book starts out by explaining the setting and gives the reader an understanding of characters involved. After this, conflict arises in the story, hooking the reader’s attention through events that happen throughout the middle of the story and lead to the resolution of the conflict. Last, she wraps up the story and the conflicts are solved and major questions are answered. The big conflict in this story is the dispute between the Socs and the Greasers and the tension between the two really picks up when a Soc is killed by a Greaser. This book is a good example of closure because the ending does a good job of tying everything that happened together and wrapping up the story. In her book, “Closure in the Novel”, Marianna Torgovnick, discusses how to determine if a book provides closure. She believes that “the test is the appropriateness of the ending’s relationship to beginning and middle…” (Torgovnick). This is something that Hinton does a great job of in “The Outsiders”. The ending of the book is directly related to the beginning and middle and reveals the key points that the author is trying to present. The Socs and the Greasers have their big brawl and in the end, Ponyboy is able to learn multiple lessons. Not only does he discover that Socs and Greasers actually have a lot more in common than they thought, but he is also able to learn from the experience to better his relationship at home with his older brother. Some smaller details of the story may still be left open ended in this book, but the main points that the author is trying to provide are clear and closure of the story is

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