Structure

The short story “Dead Man’s Shoes” by David Evans follows a single event in the lives of the characters—the courtship process of a widow who eventually ends up marrying her foreman. The story is structured to resemble a fairy-tale as the suitors need to pass a test to gain Anne. Furthermore, a plot twist is added, as the test was rigged from the start—Anne always planned to marry her foreman, Sam.

The plot includes traditional elements such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. It also features foreshadowing elements which hint at the plot twist.

Title

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Beginning

The story begins with an exposition, which presents some of the characters, the setting, and the context of the events (or the intrigue): “When the news got round that Piet Bezuidenhout had broken his neck at the Pampoenfontein gymkhana, every bachelor, divorcé and widower in the district thought he might be just the one to fill the dead man’s shoes.” (ll. 1-4)

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Middle

The middle of the short story focuses on the seven suitors who persist in trying to convince Anne to marry. The rising action presents the men and their efforts to persuade Anne after the woman decides to take care of the farm on her own with the help of a black foreman named Sam: “But a good Black staff was one thing. A woman trying to manage it on her own was quite another. We tried to point this out to Anne. Farming was hard, said Japie…” (ll. 89-91)

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Ending

The ending includes the falling action and the plot twist resolution. In the falling action, we find out that Anne marries Sam, to the disappointment of her suitors who cannot do anything about it:

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