Twins
1. The exposition of a story occurs for three reasons: to provide necessary background, to establish the setting, and to introduce the characters.
It occurs at the beginning of a story, in this case “His wife had often criticized…” and “They were standing on the edge of an old mine shaft…” and “He was a writer of detective stories. These paragraphs all help to set the stage for the action that will unfold.
Rising Action refers to the events of a dramatic or narrative plot unfolding prior to the climax. Rising action occurs as the main conflict unfolds, creating a sense of heightened suspense as the audience becomes more and more engaged in the story.
The rising action in the story Twins happens as the couple tries to “walk through” the plot of the writer’s story in order to see if there are any gaps. “That was research. Unless you make your villain a writer, you’re going to have trouble…” to the point when Lucy is about to leave, stating that they’d better be getting back.
Climax is a structural part of a plot and is at times referred to as a crisis. It is a decisive moment or a turning point in a storyline at which the rising action turns around into a falling action. Thus, a climax is the point at which a conflict or crisis reaches its peak that calls for a resolution or denouement
In the story it occurs at the point when the character pulls the trigger once, twice, three times. The story reaches its peak, and now the audience must prepare mentally for the outcome of the story.
The falling action refers to the part of the narrative between the climax and the resolution. IN the story Twins, this happens between “Everything else went smoothly…” and finishes with “All she had to do was nurse her grief…” Here, the details of the narrative begin to become clear and the audience realizes that the wife has turned tables on the husband, and used his plot to execute her perfect murder.
Finally, the resolution is the point of the story where all the loose ends are tied up and the main conflict is resolved. In the story Twins, the resolution or denouement occurs when the audience learns of Lucy’s finding her husband’s tackle box, make-up kit and gun just prior to their trip to the mine. This gives the reason why Lucy has murdered her husband as well as explains how she is likely to get away with it. We now have all the answers!
2. Irony is a literary device that means "dissimulation, feigned ignorance". It is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case. Irony may be divided into categories such as verbal, dramatic, and situational.
In the story “Twins”by Eric Wright, the author uses situational irony to heighten the suspense. The first example is when the husband takes Lucy out to “walk the course” of his plot. In fact, rather than having her support, he’s luring her to the remote destination so he can actually murder her, and all in the same way and for the same reasons that he has given in his story’s plot. The detective story is a ruse. The audiences’ interest is piqued by the clever twist in what, on the surface, seems to be a supportive wife helping her husband’s storyline. Another example occurs when Lucy turns the tables on her husband and then uses his plot ideas to get away with killing him. When the husband pulls the trigger once, twice, three times, the audience likely suspects that the writer has killed his wife, and will now follow his own plan to escape prosecution. When we dig deeper, however, we realize that Lucy has succeeded in killing her husband instead: “After that it was just a matter of getting hold of a gun herself, and giving him every chance to prove her guess was wrong. The rest went exactly as planned.”
3. A thematic statement that fits with the story Twins is that sometimes we can be deceived by the people we should most trust. This is the case with both Mr. and Mrs. Coates in the story, as each character betrays the other’s trust. Mr. Coates, for example, has cheated on his marriage vows by keeping a mistress: “They did establish he had a girlfriend tucked away in a condominium on Sherbourne Street…” In that regard, however, Mrs. Coates also deceives her husband when she hides the fact that she’s aware of the girlfriend: “If she had not known about the lady in the condominium…” The ultimate betrayal of each character is, of course, when they plot murder. Mr. Coates uses his story as a guise for getting Lucy out where he can kill her; Lucy, having discovered the plot, deceives Mr. Coates by stealing his ammo and then using his own plot against him. Deception is the key to all the twists in the story.
