Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Overcoming the Monster
Anticipation Stage and "Call"
When we first meet Holmes, he's loving the smell of slaughtered hogs in the morning (we're sure he likes napalm, too). Holmes marries women and kills them off, and he sets up his death castle just a train ride away from the Chicago World's Fair. He casts a threatening shadow over the dream city our hero Burnham works tirelessly to create.
Burnham, meanwhile, is called to serve as the fair's lead architect and show the nation just how beautiful cities could and should be.
Dream Stage
While Holmes builds his dream—or is that "nightmare"?—hotel, Burnham prepares to pull off one of the greatest feats in architectural history. Holmes hires and fires construction workers, installs an airtight vault, connects gas pipes to windowless rooms. Burnham, by contrast, prepares to share his vision of a perfect American city.
Frustration Stage
Holmes receives letters from families whose daughters have disappeared. With the fair ending, he leaves Chicago but winds up in custody for identity fraud. Detective Geyer comes face to face with the monster, now a suspect in the murder of three children and their father.
Back at the fairgrounds, Burnham sees the well-planned Closing Day festivities switch to a funeral procession for the assassinated mayor of Chicago.
Nightmare Stage
All Geyer has to do is produce the bodies of the three missing children. He's sent on a wild goose chase all around the Midwest. Meanwhile, Holmes sits calmly in prison. It's something of a game for him because he knows Geyer will never find any incriminating evidence.
For Burnham, the end of the fair means his buildings are no longer needed. The first of the planned fires demolish the once beautiful White City.
Death of the Monster
Tables turn on Holmes as Geyer receives a tip that turns out to be helpful. He produces the three bodies and Holmes is charged with murder. The families of the missing women and children finally have some answers, through they're unsettling and disturbing.
As for Burnham, the White City has a powerful and lasting impact on the nation, outlasting the architectural monstrosity that is Holmes' castle.