Steps toward the Climax of Action: Summary repetitions of the dramatic climax scene emphasize the winning out of Nag Hong Fah. 2. Nag Hong Fah receives permission from the official head of Fanny’s family to beat her. 3. She becomes the submissive wife; the family seems a model of happiness.
4. Fanny exhibits an “imitation” bracelet.
5. Her apparent adherence to “the straight and narrow” is intensified by Brian’s report of the Finnish sailor episode.
6. Fanny comes down with pneumonia. (Does this seem logical or a too obvious device of the author?)
7. Nag writes to Yung Quai and sends money for her transportation to New York.
8. He indicates to the dying Fanny that he will educate her daughter, and from the sale of Fanny’s possessions—including the imitation bracelet.
Climax of Action in the first line of interest.—
Fanny, in a magnificent final flame of contempt and victory, declares the worth of the bracelet, and that Yung Long gave it to her. (Recall the allusion, page 4, to this point as the “dramatic climax” for Nag Hong Fah.)
Steps toward the Dénouement: The scene between Nag Hong Fah and Yung Long, wherein Nag conveys to Yung his knowledge of the gift, and “motivates” the real cause of the gift. Yung affirms Nag’s judgment, and further indicates that Señora Garcia might best be put out of the way. Nag Hong Fah agrees that it would be but a simple act of piety and goes to get his knife. (Do they here “mean what they say” or “say what they mean”?)
The struggle, then, in the first line of interest (the story of Fanny and Nag Hong Fah) is one between the Occident and the Orient. The Occident wins, in the person of Fanny. But because of the second line of interest (the story of Nag Hong Fah, Yung Long and Yung Quai), the victory gives way to the victory of the Orient. Study the story for the points of contact of these two lines, the complication effected, and the unification of the two interests.