Structure
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Beginning
Beth Macy's article “‘I Am Going to Die if I Keep Living the Way I Am.’ She Was Right.” opens with a short note about Tess’s final fate, and proceeds to say that it will tell the story of what led to it. This sparks the curiosity of readers, who will probably want to know how Tess’s life ended so tragically.
The text itself also starts dramatically, recou…
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Middle
The main body of the article is focused on sharing Tess’s story, though Macy also comments more generally on the opioid crisis and potential solutions to it.
Macy generally focuses on sharing the last two years of Tess’s life in more or less chronological order, as this was the period when Macy was covering her story intensely. She goes further into the past when talking about how Tess’s addiction started, however: “T…
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Ending
At the end of the article, Macy skips back to the situation described in the beginning, when she received the phone call from Tess’s mother with the news about Tess's tragic death. This hits readers especially hard at this point because the previous section was a description of Tess’s newfound determination to become clean and become a good mother to her son. Moreover, Macy finally reveals the shocking detail that Tess has not di…
