Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Comedy
Like The History of Tom Jones, another picaresque novel, The Adventures of Augie March follows the basic plot structure of a comedy. Most of the events fall into a stage of darkness or twilight—a stage of unknowing and uncertainty. The story concludes with a moment of recognition, where the sun comes out and the darkness ends. Sort of. Let's look at how Augie March is divided into these two stages.
The Twilight Stage
No overarching villain appears in the pages of this novel. Sure, Augie meets people who mean him ill, but they're here one minute and gone the next. Augie is really his own worst enemy. The cause of his uncertainty is himself—his limitations and his decisions. Throughout the whole book, Augie seeks autonomy and self-possession, but he's too vague on the details of what he wants and who he wants to be. Consequently, he can't make decisions that put him on a permanent path.
At least he has the fortune of living on the happier, humorous side of existential angst. Augie has something of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy in him. He doesn't want to be defined by other people's projects and runs whenever someone tries to put him into their long-term plans. He wants the freedom to be himself, but he doesn't know who he is or what he really wants out of life. Hm, we wonder how that's going to work out for him.
The Recognition Stage
Spoiler alert: Augie doesn't have any moment of self-discovery or self-transcendence. At the end of the day, he's the same old flighty Augie March he always has been. His recognition comes not when he sees himself as he really is, but when he sees and can laugh at the persistency of his hope that he will one day know himself and find something better than reality. He'll figure it out some day, just not today. What's the hurry anyways?