A&P Structure

One thing I found very interesting about this piece was it's format. It was one long narrow column of text. There were no indentations, only empty space between paragraphs. This had an interesting effect of the dialogue.

Throughout the piece the format prevents us from seeing too far ahead. We can't really gauge what will happen next because none of the standard cues are there for us. Even when characters first start talking, the tags used and the descriptions attached to them ensconce them in their own paragraphs.

This is not true, however, when Sammy quits.

Here there are no tags, and the sentences are short, not taking up more than one line of text. This gives them wait. It speeds up the pace of the dialogue from the slow march the block-text of the piece had maintained previously, reminding us, even after the narrator tells us that this is the "sad part" that we've reached the climax of the piece.