Structure

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The short story follows a traditional plot structure, with an exposition, a rising action, a climax, a falling action, and a resolution.

Title

At first, the title of the short story is intriguing, as the expression “to feed the night” does not appear anywhere in the text. However, the word “night” appears in the episode where the husband and the wife talk about their need to buy a larger house, much bigger than they need or afford:

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Beginning

The exposition of the story introduces the main characters and their background: “They lived in London at the end of the nineteen eighties. His wife was twenty-four. He was twenty-six. In her job, she earned eleven thousand pounds a year, and he earned thirteen thousand pounds a year” (ll. 1-3). Furthermore, we also find out the context in which they are presented:

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Middle

The rising action consists of the couple’s decisions to buy properties that are increasingly large and expensive. At first, they sell their modest apartment and buy the flat that the husband has seen advertised in the shop’s window. Then, after 18 months, the husband meets Mr Bell again, and the couple is persuaded to buy a large house with a garden. After yet another year, the couple is persuaded to buy an even bigger property, but their offers are met by a competitor’s higher bids.

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Ending

The falling action is very short and presents the man’s wife moving “to the house she had been born in, where her parents lived, where they had always lived” (ll. 449-450). She holds a box that contains her husband’s urn, and she decides to put it away.

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