comment on structure

The novel's essential structure is linear, moving forward in time from event to event, encounter to encounter, and realization to realization. The key point to note here is that those events, encounters and realizations are all defined and/or motivated by the internal states of the novel's characters. In other words, structure and narrative movement are defined by the degrees and/or the ways in which the characters are changing and transforming rather than by outside circumstances and their effects on the characters lives. In that sense, the novel is a very effective illustration of the rule, quoted with particular frequency in relation to dramatic writing, that structure and action is character.