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former lover Miller. Perhaps this is more an act of revenge against Kane, whom she still loves, but who betrayed her when he chose his new, very blond, and upper-class Quaker wife (the incongruously East Coast ingénue Grace Kelly), who is less than half his age.
    Each of these complex subplots resolves neatly with these important secondary characters making a fateful decision at the moment of crisis: Amy forsakes her pacifist beliefs and chooses to stay loyally by Kane’s side, taking up the gun and killing one of the gang herself. Helen Ramirez chooses to be loyal to herself. No longer Kane’s lover and no longer in need of a protector from Miller, she recognizes that she no longer has a stake in the community and willfully departs on the same train that brings Miller. Harvey, for his part, tries unsuccessfully to obtain Kane’s position as the sheriff and Helen’s protector. Equally unable to compel Kane to leave town, Harvey ultimately sells out Kane, refusing to risk his life and join in the battle against the Miller gang.
    Meanwhile, the townspeople, one by one and group by group, betray Kane and themselves, refusing to come to his aid to save the community from the ravages of the antagonist. Their abandonment of Kane anticipates the climax of the film by leaving Kane to face the Miller gang single-handedly. This theme of betrayal fits well within the form of the melodrama; it explores the capitulation of good to evil. It is self-betrayal on a grander scale; the community compromises integrity in the face of evil based on self-deception repackaged as rationality.
    So that the old steady state is restored or a new (transformed) steady state is created
.
    In
Jaws
the climax is dramatic, but purely physical. The characters remain static and unchanged, and the anterior steady state of calm on the island is restored. Transcendent evil has been defeated by goodness and virtue. The dawn breaks on Amity Island, and crowds of bathers will soon be returning to the waters.
    In
High Noon
the outcome is much different. The plot pushes forward to a new and transformed steady state. The bad guys have been defeated in the climax; good is victorious over evil. Kane enjoys the sweet reward of Amy’s love and his own honor reclaimed. Kane has saved the community and will ride off into the sunset, just as Western heroes traditionally do. But there is no simple resolution. Kane cannot go back into the past; he cannot ignore the hypocrisy and cowardice of the townspeople. The ending is transformative.
    And the story concludes by drawing the then-and-there of the tale that has been told into the here-and-now of the telling through some coda—say, for example, Aesop’s characteristic moral of the story
.
    In
Jaws
, there is a slight wisp of irony underlying the restorative ending and the innocence of the bathers returning to the waters; it is as if nothing has transpired in the plot, there are no lessons to be learned, and the past is already eliminated. The sharkfest is already banished from collective memory.
    In
High Noon
the coda placed upon the transformative ending is far more complex. The town is joyful at Kane’s victory as they come out of hiding. But when Kane quickly and joylessly departs he flings his star—the marshal’s badge, signifying justice and law and order—down upon the ground, where he has just left the bodies of Frank Miller and the Miller gang, in disgust. He boards the buckboard with Amy and wordlessly leaves town. The audience is left to ponder the meaning of the coda’s final images. Certainly, the ending signifies that a transformation has taken place and that Kane will never return to this community in the Old West ever again.

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Plotting II
    PLOT STRUCTURE IN A CLOSING ARGUMENT TO A JURY IN A COMPLEX TORTS CASE
    Give me the story—please, the story. If I can finally understand
the case in simple terms, I can, in turn, tell the same
story to the jury and make