Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder: Critical Analysis
Dear Readers,
The ideas shared here are recollected from different sources in reference to the textual discussion. The sharing should not be used for commercial purposes. The notes are to be used only for classroom discussion purposes and to support the students in conceptualizing the text.
Sophie’s World: Key points to remember
- philosophy-literally means love for wisdom
- describes a concept of wonder-sense of questioning
- universe seem-fixed, predictable and dry
- the world is viewed as seeing the tricks in the novel
- Sophie Amundsen-A teenage girl learns a lesson on philosophy and the history of Western philosophy from her teacher-Alberto Knox
- Alberto Knox guides Sophie through Ancient Greeks, the medical thinkers, enlightenment and Romantic idealism
- All these things make Sophie rethink her positionality in this world-What is true? What is false? what is life? and others…
- Sophie admires Plato, Hegel, Kant, and Nietzsche and sets moral lesson
- She is interested in feminism
- Sophie’s World is a novel having a history of 3000 years history of Western philosophy.
- Throughout the novel, Sophie’s intellectual excitement is contrasted with her mom’s dullness
- The study of philosophy is perceived as a study to escape from boredom and tricks of life
- Philosophy is an ongoing process of reading, discussing and contemplating.
- Therefore, philosophy is about preserving one’s sense of wonder-realizes true wisdom
- We find the sense of philosophy in almost all the chapters, basically among 35 chapters- chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 11, 23, 24 and 30 talk more on the theme of philosophy, wisdom and wonder
- The novel contains the author’s imagination and functional imagination
Descriptive analysis
Context: Sophie Amundsen is fourteen years old when the book begins, living in Norway. She begins a strange correspondence course in philosophy. Every day, a letter comes to her mailbox that contains a few questions and then later in the day a package comes with some typed pages describing the ideas of a philosopher who dealt with the issues raised by the questions.
Quest of Philosophy: Although at first she does not know, later on Sophie learns that Alberto Knox is the name of the philosopher who is teaching her. He sends her packages via his dog Hermes. Initially, Alberto tells Sophie that philosophy is extremely relevant to life and that if we do not question and ponder our very existence we are not really living. Then he proceeds to go through the history of Western philosophy. Alberto teaches Sophie about the ancient myths that people had in the days before they tried to come up with natural explanations for the processes in the world. Then she learns about the natural philosophers who were concerned with change. Next, Alberto describes Democritus and the theory of indivisible atoms underlying all of nature as well as the concept of fate.
At the same time as she takes the philosophy course, Sophie receives a strange postcard sent to Hilde Møller Knag, care of Sophie. The postcard is from Hilde’s father and wishes Hilde a happy birthday. Sophie is confused, and more so when she finds a scarf with Hilde’s name on it. She does not know what is happening but she is sure that Hilde and the philosophy course must somehow be connected. She learns about Socrates, who was wise enough to know that he knew nothing. Then Alberto sends her a video that shows him in present-day Athens and somehow he seems to go back in time to ancient Athens. She learns about Plato and his world of ideas and then about Aristotle, who critiqued Plato, classified much of the natural world, and founded logic and our theory of concepts.
Advancement of Philosophy: Then, as Sophie’s education continues, the Hilde situation begins to get more complicated. She finds many more postcards to Hilde, and some of them are even dated June 15, the day of Sophie will turn 15. The problem is that June 15 is still over a month away. She discovers some of this with her best friend Joanna, and one of the postcards tells Hilde that one day she will meet Sophie and also mentions Joanna. Strange things are happening that the girls cannot figure out. Sophie’s relationship with her mother becomes somewhat strained as she tries both to cover up the correspondence with Alberto and to practice her philosophical thinking on her mom. Meanwhile, Alberto teaches Sophie about Jesus and the meeting of Indo-European and Semitic culture. She learns about St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, and the christianization of Greek philosophy that occurred in the Middle Ages. By this time, Sophie has met Alberto and he begins hinting that the philosophy is about to get extremely relevant to the strange things that are happening to her.
Sophie learns about the focus on humanity in the Renaissance and the extremes of the Baroque and then Alberto focuses on some key philosophers. Urgently, he teaches her about Descartes, who doubted, and by doing so knew at least that he could doubt. They move on to Spinoza as it becomes clear that Hilde’s father has some awesome power over them. Then Sophie learns about the empiricists. Locke believed in natural rights and that everything we know is gained from experience. Hume, an important influence on Kant, showed that our actions are guided by feelings and warned against making laws based upon our experiences. But Berkeley is most important to Sophie because he suggested that perhaps our entire lives were inside the mind of God. And Alberto says that their lives are inside the mind of Albert Knag, Hilde’s father.
At this point the story switches to Hilde’s point of view. On June 15, the day she turns fifteen, Hilde receives a birthday gift from her father entitled Sophie’s World. She begins to read and is enthralled. We follow the rest of Sophie’s story from Hilde’s perspective. Hilde becomes certain that Sophie exists, that she is not just a character in a book. Alberto has a plan to escape Albert Knag’s mind, and they must finish the philosophy course before that can happen. He teaches Sophie about the Enlightenment and its humane values and about Kant and his unification of empiricist and rationalist thought. Things in Sophie’s life have become completely insane but she and Alberto know they must figure out a way to do something. It will have to occur on the night of June 15, when Hilde’s father returns home. They learn about the world spirit of Romanticism, Hegel’s dialectical view of history, and Kierkegaard’s belief that the individual’s existence is primary. Meanwhile, Hilde plans a surprise for her father on his return home. They rush through Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Sartre, desperate to come up with a plan to escape even though everything they do is known by Hilde’s father. Then at the end of Sophie’s World, the book that Hilde is reading, while at a party for Sophie on June 15, Alberto and Sophie disappear. Hilde’s father comes home and they talk about the book, and Hilde is sure that Sophie exists somewhere. Meanwhile, Sophie and Alberto have a new existence as spirit—they have escaped from Albert Knag’s mind but they are invisible to other people and can walk right through them. Sophie wants to try to interfere in the world of Hilde and her father, and at the end of the book she is learning how to do so.
The Cherry Orchid
by Anton Chekhov
Context
The play begins in the pre-dawn hours of a May morning in Russia. We learn that the cherry trees are in bloom even though it is frosty outside. Yermolay Lopakhin, a friend of the family, and Dunyasha a maid on the Ranevsky estate, wait for the estate’s owner Ranevsky at the estate’s main house, in a room called “the nursery”. Lopakhin reveals that Ranevsky has been in Paris for the last five years. Lopakhin is a local businessman in his mid- thirties, dressed in a fine white suit (with gaudy yellow shoes), whose feelings towards Ranevsky are mixed between affectionate gratitude for past kindnesses, and resentment at her condescension toward him because of his humble, peasant origins. Also on the estate is Simon Yephikodov, a hapless youth nicknamed “Simple Simon” because of his frequent and ridiculous accidents.
Discussion
Soon, Ranevsky arrives from Paris, along with her daughter Anya, who has been with her there since Easter of that year; Yasha, a young manservant who has accompanied her on her travels; and Charlotte, Anya’s governess, who brings along her dog. Also accompanying her are Firs, her 87-year old manservant; her elder, yet still infantile, brother Leonid Gayev; and her adopted daughter Varya; these last three have stayed in Russia but went to the station to greet Ranevsky on her return.
Rising Action
Ranevksy expresses her joy and amazement to be home again, while Anya reveals to Varya the relative poverty in which she found her mother when she arrived in Paris and the way in which she continues to spend money. Varya reveals that the family’s estate is to be sold at auction on the 22nd of August, in order to pay their debts. Anya reveals that Ranevsky’s departure for Paris was caused by her grief over two deaths: that of her husband six years before and that of her son, Grisha, who drowned a month thereafter.
Soon, Anya departs for bed, and Lopakhin brings up the issue of the imminent sale. He proposes a solution; Ranevksy should parcel out the land on her estate, build cottages on the parcels, and lease them out to summer cottage-holders, who are becoming increasingly numerous. Gayev and Ranevsky dismiss their idea, because it would necessitate cutting down the family’s beloved (and gigantic) cherry orchard. Before he leaves, Lopakhin offers them a loan of 50,000 rubles to buy their property at auction if they change their minds, and predicts there will be no other way of saving the orchard. Ranevsky then lends some money to a fellow impoverished landowner, Boris Simeonov-Pischik. Peter Trofimov arrives; he was Grisha’s tutor before the drowning, and thus he brings back painful memories for Ranevsky. Before the end of the act, after complaining about Ranevksy’s inability to curb her spending, Gayev outlines three alternatives to Lopakhin’s plan: a financing scheme involving some banker friends of his, Ranevsky borrowing some money from Lopakhin (without the condition that they then cut down the orchard), and a wealthy aunt in Yaroslavl who might provide a loan.
In the Second Act, we are introduced more closely to the young servants on the estate, Dunyasha, Yasha, and Yephikodov, who are involved in a love triangle: Yephikodov loves Dunyasha, Dunyasha loves Yasha, and Yasha is very much in love with himself. Soon, Lopakhin, Ranevsky, Gayev, Anya and Varya appear, and they are again debating over Lopakhin’s plan to turn the orchard into cottage country. Lopakhin becomes frustrated with Ranevsky’s reluctance; she, in turn, thinks his plan is vulgar, and says that if they plan to sell the cherry orchard, she wants to be sold along with it. Ranevsky reveals that she has a lover in Paris who has been sending her telegrams, asking her to return, and who robbed her, left her, and as a result drove her to a suicide attempt.
Soon, Trofimov appears, and gives several speeches about the importance of work and the laziness and stupidity of Russian intellectuals. In a quiet moment, the sound of a snapping string is heard, and no one can identify its source. A drunkard appears, asking for directions, and then money; Ranevsky ends up giving him several gold pieces. Disturbed, most of the group leave, except for Anya and Trofimov. They discuss Varya’s growing suspicion that Anya and Trofimov are having an affair, which they are not; Trofimov declares that they are “above love”. The act ends with Yephikodov sadly playing his guitar and Varya calling out, in vain, for Anya.
Climax
In the Third Act, Ranevsky throws a party on the day of the auction. The guests consist of several local bureaucratic officials such as the stationmaster and a post-office clerk. Charlotte entertains the guests with a series of magic tricks. Ranevsky worries anxiously about why Gayev and Lopakhin have not yet returned. Ranevsky fears that the orchard has been lost, that the aunt in Yaroslavl has apparently not given them enough money to buy it, and that Gayev’s other sources have failed to come through. She and Trofimov get into an argument; Trofimov accuses her of not being able to face the truth, and she accuses him of being unusual for never having fallen in love. Lopakhin and Gayev soon return from the auction. Lopakhin reveals to everyone that he has bought the estate and intends to carry out his plans for the orchard’s destruction. Anya tries, in vain, to comfort her mother.
Falling Action
In the last act, it is October, and the trees in the cherry orchard are already being cut down. All the characters are in the process of leaving; Lopakhin will depart to Kharkov for the winter, Varya to the Ragulins’, another family that lives fifty miles away. Gayev plans to live in the town, working at a bank, Anya will go off to school, and Ranevksy will leave for Paris with Yasha, to rejoin her lover. Charlotte has no idea what she will do, but Lopakhin assures her he will help her find something. Trofimov and Lopakhin exchange an affectionate if contentious farewell; Yasha leaves Dunyasha, weeping, without a second thought; and Anya tearfully says goodbye to her mother. Anya worries that Firs, who has taken ill, has not been sent to the hospital as he was supposed to be, but Yasha indignantly assures Anya that he has. Ranevsky encourages Lopakhin to propose to Varya; but the proposal is never made—Lopakhin leaves Varya alone, and in tears. Finally, Gayev and Ranevsky bid a tearful farewell to their house. Everyone leaves, locking the doors behind them.
Resolution
But Firs is, in fact, accidentally left behind, having fallen ill and being forgotten in the rush of the departure. He walks onstage after everyone else has left, quietly muttering about how life has left him by. He lies on the couch, and silently expires as two sounds are heard; again, the sound of a string snapping, and the sound of an axe cutting down a cherry tree in the orchard.
Happy Readings!
Poetry Series
The Garden of Love
William Blake
Key ideas to remember
- Garden of Love is associated with play and carefree childhood, is now, the site of ‘Chapel’ a physical representation of a church.
- The garden which surrounds the ‘Chapel’ has changed into a graveyard.
- The beauty and happiness of life have been replaced by the graveyard.
- describes a close encounter with death and immorality as a character.
- tone causes what is really cruel and evil
- symbolizes the growth and life- death and decay of life
- Garden of Love- is a symbolic meaning of a mental and a symbolic garden
- This portrays how unnecessary restriction is made in people’s life.
- The gates of the Chapel are shut which implies the voices are shut, probihition is written in the gate.
- The garden has become a graveyard, flowers are replaced by tombstones.
- The poem reflects how the idea of love starts out as a land of liberty however the poem reflects how a beautiful garden ends with promising everything with the world of death.
- The restriction is expressed powerfully through the image of poetry.
- Garden of Love reflects William Blake’s detestation of organized religion
Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Points to Remember:
- describes a close encounter with “Death” and “Immortality”
- use of personification relates familiarity with them at the beginning of the poem causes the reader to feel at ease with the idea of death.
- depicts a speaker’s perception of death, the afterlife, and the journey it takes to get there.
- describes the experience of entering the afterlife.
- he was in the process of putting away the life she knew and allowing this next stage of existence to take over.
- Among the several themes, the major themes include mortality and death.
- The speaker is already in the afterlife when she’s describing her experiences with death.
- This a six stanza poem that is divided into sets of four lines, known as quatrains. These quatrains do not follow a single rhyme scheme, although there are examples of perfect rhyme in the poem. For example, “me,” “immortality” and “civility” in the first two stanzas.
- The poet has set down all she wanted to do in life, and willingly entered the carriage with Death and Immortality
- Regarding the literary devices, The poem includes l alliteration, allusion, personification, and enjambment.
- The tone which is the voice of the poet or speaker in the poem is calm and measured. She is aware of what is happening around her but is not overly emotional about it.
- In the first few stanza, the speaker gets closer to the death. Later, she uses the words ‘Chill’ and ‘Quivering’ to relate the life to the eternity.
- The poet seems successful in creating the emotional experience to the readers.
- The poem concludes with the speaker saying that it has been centuries since all this occurred and she first realized the horse’s heads were pointed toward “eternity”.
- Dickinson appears to have toyed with the idea of believing in an afterlife in paradise, but in the end claimed that she was “one of the lingering bad ones”, which suggests that she wanted to believe in life after death in paradise, but could not. In the end, she believed the grave was her final resting place (The Dickinson Properties).
Title Justification: ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ is a simple lyric that talks about Emily Dickinson’s fearlessness in the face of death. The title of the poem means that the poetic persona has no time to wait for death. Her mind is fearless and rational. She takes death as a natural phenomenon like the withering of plants. There is no fear in accepting what must occur. Hence, the poet can’t burden her mind with the thoughts of something natural not only to herself but also to the whole of humankind.
Letter from Mama Dot by Fred D’ Auguiar
Points to remember:
- The poem is written in the form of a letter which reflects the voice problems of black immigrants
- It raises racism and negative effects on the lives of black people
- Concentrates on the contemporary/colonial racism
- It reflects the psychological trauma of the black people ( in the lines 10-15)
- In the poem, a Caribbean mother is writing to her son abroad in England
- The son has gone abroad-unemployment and condition of the people
- Context: 1970’s and 1980’s
- It tries to relate the double subjugation of slave women and the struggle to achieve equal opportunity and fair pay in the professions.
- The poem advocates for fairness in the criminal justice system, equal access to goods, housing, health and community life
- It relates how a life story is full of pain and suffering in every moment of time.
- This mirrors the extreme form of racism, brutality and hostility.
- The second part of the poem describes the life of the people, communication of diasporic people, effects caused due to dictatorship in the country, loss of the identity
- It connects how a son’s own identity is in the crisis.
- The character ‘grandmother’ is vital for awareness of life identity and struggle in life.
Drama Series
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, (A memory play is a play in which a lead character narrates the events of the play, which are drawn from the character’s memory.) The action in the drama is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. He is an aspiring poet who toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura’s father, ran off years ago and, except for one postcard, has not been heard from since.
Amanda, originally from a genteel Southern family, regales her children frequently with tales of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. She is disappointed that Laura, who wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentlemen callers. She enrolls Laura in a business college, hoping that she will make her own and the family’s fortune through a business career. Weeks later, however, Amanda discovers that Laura’s crippling shyness has led her to drop out of the class secretly and spend her days wandering the city alone. Amanda then decides that Laura’s last hope must lie in marriage and begins selling magazine subscriptions to earn the extra money she believes will help to attract suitors for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom, who loathes his warehouse job, finds escape in liquor, movies, and literature, much to his mother’s chagrin. During one of the frequent arguments between mother and son, Tom accidentally breaks several of the glass animal figurines that are Laura’s most prized possessions.
Amanda and Tom discuss Laura’s prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim O’Connor, a casual friend, and invites him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura learns the name of her caller; as it turns out, she had a devastating crush on Jim in high school. When Jim arrives, Laura answers the door, on Amanda’s orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving Tom and Jim alone. Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his family’s electric bill to join the merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure. Laura refuses to eat dinner with the others, feigning illness. Amanda, wearing an ostentatious dress from her glamorous youth, talks vivaciously with Jim throughout the meal.
As dinner is ending, the lights go out as a consequence of the unpaid electric bill. The characters light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to entertain Laura in the living room while she and Tom clean up. Laura is at first paralyzed by Jim’s presence, but his warm and open behavior soon draws her out of her shell. She confesses that she knew and liked him in high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her: “Blue Roses,” an accidental corruption of pleurosis, an illness Laura had in high school. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn. Laura is forgiving, noting that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried away by the moment and that he actually has a serious girlfriend. Resigned, Laura offers him the broken unicorn as a souvenir.
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
The Homecoming, two-act drama by Harold Pinter, published and produced in 1965. The Homecoming focuses on the return to his London home of Teddy, a university professor, who brings his wife, Ruth, to meet his father, Max, his brothers, Lenny and Joey, and his Uncle Sam. Ruth’s presence exposes a tangle of rage and confused sexuality in this all-male household.
Summary
Act 1, Section 1
The play begins in the evening, in the living room of an old house in North London, in the mid-20th century. Max, his brother Sam, and Max’s adult sons, Lenny and Joey, live in the house. Lenny is sitting on the sofa writing on a newspaper when his father enters in search of a cigarette. Max demands Lenny give him a cigarette, complains about getting old, boasts of his youthful exploits, and remembers his deceased wife, Jessie, with a kind of fondness.
Silent during Max’s rant, Lenny finally tells his father to shut up. The two argue, insult each other, and then sit in silence until Sam enters. Sam, a chauffeur, talks about his job and describes a client he drove to the airport. Max teases and mocks Sam and, after Lenny leaves, asks Sam why he never married. Max jokes about Sam’s love life, and Sam mentions that when Jessie was alive, he enjoyed driving her around while Max was working.
Joey returns from the gym where he was working out in hopes of making it big as a boxer. Max mocks Joey’s boxing abilities, and the conversation generally devolves into complaints, insults, and mockery of and by all.
Act 1, Section 2
Late that night, when the four men are asleep, Ruth and Teddy arrive. Teddy has not been home in six years and has not told his family of this visit, his marriage, or his three sons who are back home in the United States where Teddy is a philosophy professor. Teddy is surprised his key still works and his old room and bed are still available, as if he’d never left. Ruth decides to get some fresh air, so Teddy hands over the key and watches through the window as she goes outside.
Lenny, unable to sleep, enters the room. After Teddy and Lenny talk a while, Teddy goes upstairs to sleep. Lenny is sitting in the living room, smoking, when Ruth returns. The two talk about the family and Teddy, after which Lenny shares stories about beating up a prostitute and hitting an old woman. Ruth invites Lenny to sit on her lap, take a drink of water from her glass, and then lie on the floor while she pours the water down his throat. Lenny is confused by her “proposal,” and she goes up to bed. Max wakes up and asks Lenny what all the noise is, and Lenny tells him he was talking to himself. Lenny asks whether his conception was intentional or not, and Max aggressively insults him.
Act 1, Section 3
In the morning Max’s complaints about Sam’s constant presence in the kitchen washing up give way to a general complaint against Sam for not making more of himself by working hard and having a family, as Max did. Teddy and Ruth enter in the midst of this. Max is shocked and accusatory—demanding to know if anyone knew they had come in and demanding to know who gave permission to bring “tarts” into the house. Teddy says Ruth is his wife, but Max continues to call her a whore and wants her thrown out of the house. As others disagree with Max’s demands—either by apologizing or by not complying with them—Max begins a physical fight. Afterward, Max asks Ruth if she is a mother. Ruth says yes. Max then seeks a hug from Teddy, and Teddy seems ready to give one. Max announces, “He still loves his father!”
Act 2, Section 1
That afternoon Max, Teddy, Lenny, and Sam smoke cigars, and Ruth and Joey bring in coffee. Max asks if she is a good cook, and after Teddy says she is, reminisces about Jessie—first tenderly and then insultingly. He gives Sam a hard time about his job and then gives Teddy one about keeping his marriage secret. In the next breath, he compliments Ruth on being “intelligent and sympathetic,” asking her if she thinks the children miss their mother.
Lenny asks Teddy some philosophical questions having to do with what is real and what can be known. Ruth hijacks the conversation into one that is sexually suggestive. Teddy clearly wants to go home, but the others, especially Joey, seem mesmerized by her. Teddy goes upstairs to pack their things, and Lenny sits next to Ruth. They talk, and although Teddy (as well as other family members) comes back into the room, Ruth and Lenny dance to slow jazz and kiss. Then Joey and Ruth kiss and caress on the sofa.
Ruth and Joey fall off the sofa onto the floor, and Lenny touches Ruth with his foot. She pushes Joey away and stands, demanding a tumbler of whiskey. She asks if the family has read Teddy’s “critical works,” and Max says that none of them have. Teddy complains his family gets lost in the things they do, while he can remain more objective and observant.
Act 2, Section 2
In the evening Teddy and Sam discuss Max’s deceased friend MacGregor, and Sam asks Teddy to stay a few more weeks. A little later, Lenny tells Teddy the family is proud of him. After Joey and Max enter the room, Lenny tells Max that Ruth was upstairs with Joey for two hours, yet didn’t have sex with him.
Max suggests they keep Ruth around. Teddy and Sam object, but Max persists in making a plan for her to stay. He and Lenny speculate that she could take care of them—in various ways—and contribute financially to the family by working a few hours for Lenny (who is in fact a pimp) as a prostitute. When Ruth comes downstairs, Teddy tells her the family would like her to stay a while, and if she wants to stay, he will go home and take care of the children. Ruth agrees to stay, though she has some demands of her own.
Suddenly, Sam reveals that MacGregor and Jessie had sex in the back of his cab; then he collapses on the floor.
Teddy leaves, and Ruth sits victoriously in a chair. Joey kneels next to her and places his head in her lap. Max, beginning to weep and insisting “I’m not an old man,” crawls toward her and kneels on her other side, saying she has to take them all, not just Joey. As Lenny stands nearby, Ruth strokes Joey’s hair, and Max begs her for a kiss.
The Homecoming Plot Diagram
Introduction
1. Max antagonizes his sons and brother.
Rising Action
2. Teddy and Ruth arrive unexpectedly.
3. Ruth invites Lenny to sit on her lap and drink water.
4. Ruth kisses Lenny while the others watch.
5. Ruth kisses and embraces Joey while the others watch.
6. Max, Lenny, and Joey invite Ruth to stay.
Climax
7. Ruth agrees to stay, but Teddy decides to go home.
Falling Action
8. Sam reveals Jessie had an affair and then collapses.
Resolution
9. Joey and Max kneel next to Ruth, seated in Max’s chair.