Some writers say that the most basic unit of writing is the word. Some say it is the sentence. Both of these bricks, however, must be laid upon the foundation of plot in order to create a story and not just a descriptive piece. The way that a writer incorporates and reveals their plot can add interest or create tension. In "The Labrador Fiasco", Margaret Atwood uses two levels of story and ties them together with their respective plots, creating a deeper reading of the short family drama.
The two levels of storytelling within the story are intertwined, but distinct. Atwood uses the first level, the story being told to the father of the narrator, to more fully develop the meaning of the second level, the story of a small family dealing with sickness and old-age. Each story has a separate plot, but both plots are joined together through common or similar events and the narrator's mental connections.
Atwood initially ties the plots of the two levels together by simply introducing both at the beginning of the text. What at first seems to be a casual description (the mother hunched over a book, reading the first-level story to her husband) quickly becomes important by the narrative "having heard it before" (143) an indication that the story has some importance to the second-level narrative. Atwood also starts both levels not quite in the beginning. The narrator literally walks into both the first- and second-level stories at the same moment, knowing the beginning from prior encounters but nonetheless having missed this time around.
Later in the short story the plots are more intimately intertwined, and the first-level story is no longer a casual, although related, insertion. The plot of the adventure story mirrors that of the family drama in that the two explorers (the parents) are met by George (the narrator) and then set out on a journey, before becoming hopelessly lost. After his stroke, the father casts away his old hobbies, which can be seen as the sustenance the explorers begin to discard to lighten their load. Just as the first explorer becomes sick and has to be left behind, the narrator's father has had multiple strokes and is deteriorating. The second explorer will also be left behind presently, and the narrator, like George, will be left to find his/her own way back. In fact, the last scenes of both of these characters show George acknowledging that his only chance for survival is to abandon his clients and the narrator acknowledging that the family really won't be "fine" (153)
These ties between the two plots are effective tools of the narrative, helping to advance each plot and sketch a story. But Atwood also uses this connection to illuminate other narrative structures outside of plot. The adventure story reveals the character traits of the father: "'They took the wrong supplies.' This pleases him: he himself would not have taken the wrong supplies. In fact he would never have gone on this ill-advised journey in the first place..." (143) His response to the first-level adventure story shows how he sees himself and also how his progeny views him. The two-level structure also allows the narrator to throw in not-quite-random aphorisms to hint at wider meanings. In the midst of the adventurer's departure, the narrator quips: "They know they are going into danger, but they also know they are immortal. Such moods do occur, in the north." (148). Finally, the adventure story makes the ending clear without requiring the father's death be made explicit.
Once Atwood established the connection between the parallel plots of the two levels of her short story, she was free to use the adventure story to illuminate integral parts of the main story. She could easily have told a single story, left those ill-fated woodsman out of the small drama of a father falling apart. But without her use of a second plot, the story would have lost depth of meaning, depth of character, and an excuse to share back story.
-Victoria De Leone
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