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denouement

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Definition the outcome of a complex sequence of events — especially the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work
  • Everyone was astonished by the denouement of the case.
denouement = the outcome of a complex sequence of events — especially the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work
  • While suspicion was to be directed against him, she would be making quiet preparations for a very different denouement.
    Christie, Agatha  --  The Mysterious Affair at Styles
  • She remembered reading them in Mr. Pierce's seventh-grade English class, talking about symbolism, metaphors, and denouement.
    Sara Shepard  --  Pretty Little Liars
  • denouement = the final resolution of the main complication of a literary work
  • Roth's later fiction has often fought shy of the consolations of denouement, of resolving into major-key finales:
    Bharat Tandon  --  "Philip Roth and the consolations of denouement", The Times Literary Supplement, 9/26/07  --  http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article2537908.ece?EMC-Bltn (retrieved 03/19/09)
  • The denouement had come as an additional blow.
    Alfred Bester  --  The Demolished Man
  • "What an amazing denouement that was," I said.
    Agatha Christie  --  The ABC Murders
  • He was impatient as the jest elaborately rolled on to its denouement.
    Sinclair Lewis  --  Babbitt
  • "I don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden grimness.
    Edith Wharton  --  The House of Mirth
  • I thought there was going to be a denouement of tragic scope.
    William Styron  --  Sophie's Choice
  • He began laughing and as he laughed, he moved in with amazing speed and grace for the denouement.
    Pat Conroy  --  The Lords of Discipline
  • Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.
    Dan Simmons  --  Hyperion
  • It was probably this universal concurrence that had saved Billford's practice — if not his head — following the ghastly denouement.
    Stephen King  --  Misery
  • They considered the enormous English wickedness in silence, overwhelmed by its denouement.
    T. H. White  --  The Once and Future King
  • He was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion.
    Edith Wharton  --  The Age of Innocence
  • He had no intention, as yet, of regulating the denouement.
    Henry James  --  Washington Square
  • The tension began to build, and I found myself clutching the telescope as I waited for the denouement, wondering what had prompted George's swift transformation.
    Farley Mowat  --  Never Cry Wolf
  • Deaths and disclosures, universal and particular, denouements both unexpected and inexorable, transvestite melodrama on all levels including the suggestive.
    Tom Stoppard  --  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
  • He waited until 10:00 p.m. before he gave up and drove back to Norsjö, where he had a late dinner and then went to bed to read the denouement of Val McDermid's novel.
    Stieg Larsson  --  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  • After years of watching women quietly accept abuse, it is cathartic to see someone like Usha lead a countercharge—even if we're uncomfortable with the bloody denouement and cannot condone murder.
    Nicholas D. Kristof  --  Half the Sky
  • The rebirths/baptisms have a lot of common threads, but every drowning is serving its own purpose: character revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement.
    Thomas C. Foster  --  How to Read Literature Like a Professor

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