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Ordinary plurality is the written report of both Conrad and Calvin Jarrett. Because the young focuseson two different people, there are several conflicts throughout the figment that are specificto those individuals. The exchange interrogative in Conrads story is whether he will be up to(p) torecover after his suicide judge. As Dr. Berger points out, half the people who attemptsuicide will try to do it again at roughly point in their lives. The inclusion of Karens suicidetowards the close up of the novel is a way of reminding the reader that Conrad may not haverecovered completely eve when he seems to be getting better after all, Karen seemed tobe doing well when Conrad met her for a Coke earlier in the novel.The main question in Calvins story is whether he and Beth will be able to mend amends.Their conflict is based essentially in a communication worry Calvin believes that theway to heal the wounds of the past is to talk through them and discuss feelings, enchantmen tBeth only wants to move on from the past. She dislikes Calvins attitude and hisinsistence on sad closely his son. The conflict between the two parents is resolved atthe end of the novel when Beth leaves.Structurally, the novel does two things. First, it alternates back and forth between thestories of Calvin and Conrad, with individually chapter shedding some new light on theirindividual struggles and conflicts. This alter style gives the novel a kind ofmirror-image structure just as Conrad gets better over the course of the novel until he is rightfully healed, the wedding party between Calvin and Beth spirals downward until it fails.The second structural tactic of the novel is that it begins in a world that is already in someway destroy Buck has already died, and Conrad has already tried to commit suicide evenbefore the first chapter opens. On the one hand, this indicates that the book is a novelabout healing and rebuilding a ruined world, rather than about how that world got ruinedin the first place. This structure, however, also gives the book a reverse coming-of-agefeel. There are countless childrens books about boys who begin the novel as innocentkids and after a series of life experiences end the novel as slightly more mature and wiseryoung adults (Huckleberry Finn and The catcher in the Rye are examples.) OrdinaryPeople tells a coming-of-age story backwards. Conrad has already been through hismoment of great experience--the death of Buck--and the novel is really the story of how