APPENDIX 2

STRUCTURE IN
MICROCOSM:
CAUSE AND EFFECT

This appendix contains one excerpt. Commentary follows it. Excerpt from chapter 18 of The Dark Wind, by Tony Hillerman. Harper & Row, © 198 by Tony Hillerman. In this excerpt, officer Jim Chee questions a character named Cowboy Dashee. Another character named Pauling listens in silence.

Commentary

This dialogue excerpt derives its logical, straightforward movement from careful observation of stimulus and response.

Line 1. Chee provides a stimulus with a direct question.

Line 2. Cowboy does not respond directly, but sends a counter-stimulus question, to which Chee responds immediately in the next line.

Lines 3–10. Stimulus-response questions and answers link tightly as Chee seeks and receives additional information.

Lines 11–13. Cowboy momentarily gets off the straight stimulus-and-response pattern by acting upon some internalization which the reader cannot know since the reader is not in Cowboy’s viewpoint.

Line 14. Chee immediately brings Cowboy back by resuming stimulus-questioning.

Line 27. For the first time, Chee does not send a direct stimulus in his spoken words.

Line 28. Cowboy makes his next statement responsive by repeating Chee’s words “good for.” Thus, although the content of Chee’s last remark was not an obvious stimulus, the author makes it work as a stimulus in the way it is worded—and by showing how Cowboy picks up on the words and repeats them in a different context.