Importance of Structure

All three of these stories revolve around structure. Structure is the thing that determines how a reader will read the story. If facts are given straightforward and consecutively, we try to guess the ending. However, in How I Met my Husband, there was a twist ending. We also saw this sort of irregular ending in the story Interpreter of Maladies. Surprise endings are normally not expected by a reader, hence the name. These flip the rules of structure and leave the reader thinking, "I didn't see that coming." It was very effective in these two stories and compeltely changed my outlook towards them.