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 : None
Scholars have had a lot to say about the plot structuring of the novel. We’ve read everything from a super-cool theory that the plot is circular – like the canals of Amsterdam or Dante’s hell – with a series of ripples coming out from the center (the incident on the bridge, which is literally at the center of the novel), to a paper arguing that Jean-Baptiste’s five monologues are a polyptych, a series of panels constituting a whole, just like the van Eyck painting. The point is, to pick one of Booker’s Seven Basic Plots for this book wouldn’t be possible or even helpful in terms of analyzing The Fall.