How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again | Style
Fragmentary Structure
Even many years after the story’s publication, the structure of ‘‘How I Contemplated’’ is still striking and somewhat unsettling to readers. The experimental form Oates uses is fragmentary and full of gaps. Instead of writing the story of an affluent young girl’s temporary descent into a life on the streets and in a house of corrections, she gives readers only the girl’s own notes for an essay that she may or may not ever write.
What appears to be an orderly outline in twelve sections is really a random and partial arrangement of...
[The entire page is 613 words long]
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