INTRIGUING PLOT TWISTS

Stories told in every medium may take advantage of the literary device informally known as the plot twist, but none do it quite so well as the older short stories. Today let’s take a look at four of my favorites—and fair warning: I intend to report the surprise endings!

Kate Chopin wrote in the late 1800s when repressive patriarchy made husbands all-powerful and often cruel. In “The Story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard goes upstairs to mourn the sudden death of her husband Brently in a train collision, but suddenly realizes this means freedom for her. The reader is not expecting the next chain of events as the widow Mallard descends the staircase. . . the front door opens, Brently walks in, and she drops dead of shock and disappointment.

In the world of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” towns hold an annual lottery, and each man, woman and child participates. Some towns have abandoned the ritual, but they are considered foolish. There is a clue when boys begin to stack stones, but this is dismissed by most readers. After all, the assembled townspeople are happy, talking about “planting and rain, tractors and taxes.” As the story unwinds, a drawing selects a family, then a family member. The horror does not set in until Mrs. Hutchinson’s name is read, the crowd gathers around her, and “Mrs. Dunbar picks up a stone so large it takes both hands.”

The twist is even harder to anticipate in Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.” A patient is dying and wants her best friend to move in to the hospital with her, tell frivolous stories she will soon forget. The friend resists the takeover of her life by blocking her emotions, but reluctantly tells of a man who robbed a bank with a chicken, and a chimpanzee who is taught to “sign” with her hands. The hospital relationship is fraught, the patient dies, and the friend is forced to confront her stifled emotions by recalling the end of the chimpanzee’s story. When the animal’s newborn dies, she signs: “Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug–fluent now in the language of grief”—grief also felt by the reader.

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes place during the Civil War when federal troops are preparing to hang Peyton Farquar for trying to sabotage the bridge and halt the advance of Union troops. Farquar thinks of his family as they put the noose around his neck and push him off the bridge, but suddenly the rope breaks and he falls into the river, swimming to escape the barrage of bullets. Regardless of war sentiments, the reader urges on the man’s escape out of the river, through the woods, to the door of his home. At the very end, we know the truth. “Peyton Farquar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”

In every instance, the plot twist is intended to surprise and arouse emotions in the reader. They succeeded with me.

JONNIE MARTIN

Image from Study.com Video