No One's A Mystery: Stucturalism

From a structuralism standpoint, No One’s a Mystery is a very compelling short story. It is structured as an exchange of short choppy dialogue sentences between Jack and his unnamed mistress. Jack gives his eighteen year old mistress a diary for her eighteenth birthday. While seemingly insignificant, this diary will become the central focal point around which the plot hinges. A book is not the first thing that often comes to mind when an author is deciding what to base the entire story on. It is also not typically the first choice to be used as an item to structure a story. Both of these factors, in my mind, set off alarm bells that perhaps this was not going to be the most well planned or well written story. I was wrong. Tallent does an amazing job with such an odd focus. The diary not only serves as the driving force behind the action in the story, but also as the lattice upon which the entire story rests. Tallent uses the diary as the framework of the main confrontation or conflict in the story. Jack’s view of the future, represented by his theoretical entries, is somewhat cynical but realistic. His mistress, however, sees their relationship as ending in marriage. In this way, the diary also represents the parallel structure of innocence versus experience. Jack’s viewpoint, corrupted by his lifetime of experience, is harshly realistic. However, his mistress as a young and innocent eighteen year old girl, has a much more wildly romantic view of what is, in fact, just an ephemeral fling. Due to the masterful use of the diary, I believe Tallent has penned a master work.