Exercises: Time in plot and story (frequency)


  1. Do events or circumstances repeat themselves in the narrative you are studying?
  2. If so, how does the narrative draw our attention to these repetitions and make us aware of them? (Is there a similarity of wording or symbolism in each instance, for example?)
  3. If the narrative gives us a sense of events or circumstances repeating, how important is it to our understanding of each individual event or circumstance that we perceive it as a repetition and not as a one-off, stand alone occurrence?
  4. If the narrative arranges some or all of its events or circumstances into a repeating pattern, how important is the presence of this pattern to our understanding of the narrative as a whole?
  5. If the narrative does not arrange any of its events or circumstances into a repeating pattern, how important is the lack of any such pattern to our understanding of the narrative as a whole?