Themes and Motifs: Recurring Tropes Constitutive moment
Description
A moment in a character's story when something happens that changes the arc of his or her life. For example, when in Absalom! Thomas Sutpen is turned away from the front door of that Tidewater plantation. Or in The Mansion, when Houston tells Mink Snopes he still owes the one dollar "pound fee" (28). SR
Parent Term
Sibling Terms
- "Wait"
- Apotheosis
- Apparition
- Belatedness
- Beyond
- Chasing a person
- Confederate monument
- Dark house
- Dead time
- Design
- Destiny
- Doom
- Door
- Dream
- Dream turns to dust
- Echo
- Endurance
- Eternal feminine
- Fairy-tale
- Fatality
- Father said
- Fire on the hearth
- Fixation
- Gaze
- Glory
- Going fast
- Going to Texas
- Gossip
- Hands in pockets
- Illusion
- Imitation
- Killing first deer/marked with blood
- Laughter as sign of madness
- Life as repetition
- Little sister
- Mausoleum
- Mediation
- Nothingness
- Odor
- Open secret
- Paradox
- Performance
- Precognition / Something to happen
- Reality
- Recovery
- Restoration / rebuilding
- Reunion
- Revenge
- Right-of-way
- Scandal
- Searching
- Secret
- Sending someone to Jackson
- Sexual power
- Shadows
- Sleeping in same bed
- Smelled like trees
- Sole owner and proprietor
- Solitary
- Solitude
- Sound of a gunshot
- Stillness
- Sun / Sunlight
- Thinking of home
- Threshold
- Tomorrow and tomorrow
- Touch
- Triumph
- Trying to say
- Twilight
- Upward mobility
- Vanishing
- Vitality
- Year the stars fell
Tagged Events
Environment: Place›Plantation
Cultural Issues: Clothes | Slavery›Slaves vs poor whites
Themes and Motifs: Character›Innocence | Recurring Tropes›Constitutive moment | Recurring Tropes›Door
Cultural Issues: Agriculture›Regulations
Themes and Motifs: Recurring Tropes›Constitutive moment