WordWealth: denouement

de·noue·ment , n.

American troops have moved into some of the southern cities, including Najaf, where they received a warm welcome today, Nasiriya and Samawa.--But, early this morning, the focus was on Baghdad and Iraq's response. The Americans are gradually moving closer to the capital. The dangers are increasing, and the denouement of the war also appears closer at hand. —— Michael R. Gordon; Battle for Baghdad Begins in Area Surrounding Iraqi Capital; The New York Times; April 2, 2003

For the first time his premiership is genuinely at risk.--It is a political tragedy, Shakespearean in the cruelty of its denouement. 9/11 accelerated trends in America that had been crystallising since the 1970s and which made the political structures in which successive British Governments have managed simultaneously to play both the American and European cards unsustainable. Blair was confronted with an invidious choice that nobody in the British establishment has wanted to make: Europe or America. Side with Europe to insist that the price of collaboration in the fight against terrorism had to be that the US observe genuinely multilateral international due process - and certainly say No to some of Washington's wilder aims. Or side with America insisting from the inside that it engaged in its wars multilaterally, and hope to bring Europe along in your wake. —— Will Hutton; The Tragedy of this Unequal Partnership; The article covers how Tony Blair has made the gravest mistake of his political life; Guardian; March 30, 2003

It has been all the more provoking to the former class, that each surprise was the result of art, and not of trick; for a rapid review of previous chapters has shown that the materials of a strictly logical development of the story were freely given. Even after the first, second, third, and even fourth of these surprises gave their pleasing electric shocks to intelligent curiosity, the denouement was still hidden, though confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character, the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the conclusions. —— Charles Dickens; Great Expectations; The Atlantic, Sep 1861

Rilke's observant eye makes the auction house chapters special highlights in a novel that has no shortage of good moments. The salesroom denouement is marvelous. As the bidders assemble, information starts to tumble about in an exhilarating way. —— Sophie Harrison; 'The Cutting Room': The Pictures in the Attic; The New York Times; March 30, 2003

The novel builds up to a long, revelatory, stream-of-consciousness section set within the fading mind of the 92-year-old heroine. Or villain. Pye twists the reader's sympathies until a wholly surprising denouement in which the pieces, as in a completed jigsaw puzzle, fall neatly into place. The narrative hints at, but stops short of, a final tout comprendre conclusion. Not everything (arguably nothing) is finally pardoned. But moral judgment is infinitely complicated by the technique of this novel and the artful way in which it presents its ''facts.'' —— John Sutherland; Dishonest Appraisals; The New York Times; March 2, 2003

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