ELLIS / WHEN THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN 31
emotional intimacy. You may choose to talk about a relationship that has not become intimate, perhaps because of embarrassment, lack of trust, fear of being rejected, or the need to control. Don’t feel constrained to share details; just de- scribe the kinds of things you feel comfortable sharing.
Discuss what you learned about intimacy from this relationship. To help keep your discussion focused, consider the following questions:
What do you look for in an intimate relationship?
Ellis generalizes that embarrassment is a barrier to intimacy. What else could have prevented the relationship between Ellis and his father from becoming intimate?
A Well-Told Story
To keep readers’ interest, even the most exciting stories, like Dillard’s story of being chased through city streets and backyards, need to be organized in a way that builds suspense and tension. A common way to represent the dramatic organization of a narrative is with a pyramid:
You can use this pyramid to analyze the structure of a story you’re reading or to outline a story you’re planning to write (see p. 48).
If you compare the dramatic structure of Dillard’s story to Brandt’s, you will see that the two writers give more space to different elements of the story. After several paragraphs of exposition, Dillard devotes most of the story to the rising action as the man chases Dillard and Mikey relentlessly through streets and backyards. The climax comes when he catches the kids, but the story ends without description of the falling action or resolution. Brandt has a more complicated rising action that includes the mini-climaxes of getting caught and getting arrested before the final confrontation with her parents, followed by falling action and a briefly stated resolution.
To analyze how Ellis organizes his story, do the following:
Skim the essay and note in the margin where you find the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Does Ellis’s story have one climax, or more than one?