Which Plot to Choose

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So, before going any further, let’s decide on a plot line to focus on for your analysis of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. As stated below “Choose Your Own Adventure” I gave you a list of possible plot lines to choose from:

1. Jeanette’s relationship to her mother

2. The discovery of Jeanette’s sexuality

3. Her relationship to her faith

Which of these three plot lines do you think is the most important and why? Please post an answer of 250-350 words

 

 

 

Choose Your Own Adventure

 

Some of you may be too young to remember this, but there used to be a genre of books called ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ for elementary school kids. In these books, you, the reader, decided on the course of action to take at the end of every chapter, which then directed you to a new page and chapter. This process repeated again and again, where you continued to make decisions as you read and this was how the story unfolded. Sometimes you survived the experience and arrived at a happy ending, other times you came to a quick and unsatisfying death. I mention this, because a novel usually has a number of different plot lines woven into it and depending on your individual reading experience, one person might think the main story is about the life of a struggling artist, while another reader thinks that the main story is about the struggles of finding love in the city. It all depends on how you, the reader, are seeing it.

One of the tasks for your essay #2 is to consider what kind of story the novel is telling. As we’re aware by now, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a thinly veiled work of memoir with ‘Jeanette’ as the main character and Jeanette is juggling a number of different issues in her life: 1) her relationship to her mother, 2) her sexuality, and 3) her faith. Each of these three plot lines thread through the novel.

When you think about how to apply the Hero’s Journey, what’s not helpful is trying to incorporate all the plot lines into your analysis and thereby mix up unrelated plots in the story, such as writing about her sexual awakening and then her relationship to her faith and then issues with her mother. What you’ll end up with is a jumbled and confused essay. Instead, the better strategy is to choose a plot line you want to focus on and use that plot as the thread along which you apply the Hero’s Journey structure. This may strike you as limiting your options and that is, in fact, exactly what’s happening. However, in choosing just one plot line, you are forcing yourself to focus on specific scenes, closely analyzing statements, actions, behaviors, and thoughts based on that one plot line. From that, you then draw connections to stages of the Hero’s Journey.