Page to Stage by Vincent Murphy

Author:Vincent Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Example of the Central Event of a Play

Although the most dramatic event in The Cockfighter is the championship match that Sonny loses, it is not the central event of the story or the adaptation. The central event happens later in the play in the moments of recognition that had struck me in my earliest readings of the novel, as I described in chapter 2 on dialogue and narrative:

MOTHER: You said it wasn't Sonny's fault.

FATHER: It was, and it wasn't. I thought he couldn't lose with that cock, and he did.

MOTHER: You said it had some kind of disease.

FATHER: One thing I hate is that he didn't tell me. He just threw that cock away.

MOTHER: I don't see how he could have known.

FATHER: I'd have known. If it was me, I would have told.

MOTHER: That's silly, Jake. You don't know what you'd do if you were him.

FATHER: I'd have taken an interest in it. You know me. I'd do it like I do right now. I always have, and I always will.

MOTHER: I know that, Jake.

FATHER: I'm not like him. Never have been and never will be.

(Shift.)

BOY: As soon as he said that, I knew what it was. The last piece snapped into place. I wasn't him and never would be, and not only that, I never would want to. Each one was different. That was the puzzle. (151; see also the novel, 197)

The central event occurs when the father, who has won control of the boy, sees him as a loser and cuts him loose, freeing the boy to be himself.

If you identify the central event for your principal character, defined by your theme, you have the essential elements of the story. Your theme is the idea, the impetus that drives your story. The central event is the actual physical action that reveals the decisive turning point around that idea.

From “This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind,” we can deduce that Hamlet is the principal character and his greatest moment of oscillation—when he doesn't kill Claudius at prayer—is the central event of the storyline Olivier has stated. If adaptor Frank Galati thought the storyline of The Grapes of Wrath was “Americans' loss of faith as hard times hit,” he would have selected more material for ex-preacher Casy. Instead, The Grapes of Wrath adaptation storyline focuses on the Joad family and the central event of arriving in the Promised Land.

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