The main characters in each tale, being from the same small towns, are tightly wound together in a tangle of many relationships. We must notice also, that in each story, our concentration upon the major characters is broken by the appearance of the poorer country folk, as if for comic relief, to recap the happenings of an event that had just occurred, much like a Greek chorus.

             I know The Mayor of Casterbridge to be a serialized novel and The Return of the Native seems to be as well. Each seems to be arranged in an episodic sequence. Hardy puts enough suspense at the end of each episode to make the reader want to read the next episode. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, each episode develops an important part of Henchard's downfall. Each episode in The Return of the Native forms a significant step towards the tragedy that takes place in the end.

             Henchard's journey through the novel can basically be seen with a few separate tragedies that make up his steady undoing until his death. The first episode in The Mayor of Casterbridge ends in Henchard loosing his family, a great mistake which he will never fully overcome. This event acts as the inciting incident which triggers all of his misfortunes to come. After the return of his wife and her subsequent death, he learns the truth about Elizabeth-Jane's parentage and that he is not her real father. In the following plot sequence, his secret from the first episode is revealed and he loses Lucetta to Farfrae and his status begins to dwindle. Consequently, he loses his business, house, and his furniture to his friend turned nemesis. Then, upon the arrival of Newson, he fears that he is going to lose Elizabeth-Jane, who is all he has left. During the final segment, he loses his daughter and dies lonely and unremembered, not knowing that his daughter forgave him.

             Much in the same way, The Return of the Native had many parts that led up to the culminating catastrophe.