Explanations

The book I have chosen to consider is the novel, Requiem por un campesino espanol by Ramon J. Sender, a Spanish author exiled during the Spanish Civil War. The book is set in a small town of Aragon, Espana, in the beginning of the Civil War, and deals with the reactions and divisions within the town at the onset of the War.

The reason for my choosing this book is that it is not easily "structured." The book begins in the present by then jumps back and forth between flashbacks and the present. There are no chapters, no formal divisions, only temporal divisions, that is divisions between the present and the past (flashbacks to different points in time).

After debating several ways to outline the overall structure of this novel, I decided to take the approach of dividing the text into what I will call "scenes." These scenes focus on the main story, that of Paco el del molino. When mulling this over, I had in mind that the scenes would be based aroun the main gist of the separations that I will make in the novel. I liken them a bit to the "select scene" option you get when viewing a DVD. If you can't remember exactly where you left off, they serve as a trigger mechanism, something we've discussed a lot in class. I guess one could also consider that I would be dividing a book that has no chapters into "scenes." Within the scenes, there will be subdivisions called "Action" that represent time by "present" or "flashback.". Within these catagories, there will be divisions called "Episodes," that represent various mini plots edging towards one point. And of course, the text that provides the story will be represented within the divisions as "Text." These divisions will show the levels of heirarchy within the scenes.