We look to stories for meaning, for answers to everyday life experiences. More specifically, stories are arguments that provide us with solutions to problems we may encounter in life--they provide a way to examine inequities with an eye toward resolving them. We use different points of view available to us (I, You, We, They) to examine conflict created by the inequity at the center of a story. And, by looking at the conflict in the context of the perspective, gain insight into the nature of the inequity -- hence meaning.

The perspectives represented by the four throughlines provide a close approximation to the way we look for meaning in real life, so they are familiar to us. The difference is that in stories we are given all four perspectives on the same inequity at the same time. The four perspectives combined create an argument about the nature of the inequity that exceeds our everyday powers to argue with it.

Once a complete argument is made by an author, an audience has two choices:

1. Grant the story's givens and therefore accept the argument.

2. Disallow the story's givens and toss out the argument entirely.