Absence is the novel's great motif, the subject of its ruminative investigation.
This point is vital, but the great motif in Tested Selling is Wheelerpoint No. 1, "Don't Sell the Steak — Sell the Sizzle!" On this majestic theme, Mr. Wheeler writes: The sizzle has sold more steaks than the cow ever has, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.
Frank Lloyd Wright, I learned, was a huge Beethoven fan, hailing the composer as a great motif architect and "builder".
The story of the Israelites escape from slavery became the single greatest motif of slave spirituals, including "Turn Back Pharaoh's Army," "I Am Bound for the Promised Land," and the most famous spiritual, Go Down, Moses," which was called the National Anthem of slaves.
Over time, the program developed its own core curriculum built around a "great books" motif.
Default has a great central motif, but the song it's attached to drifts by without leaving much impression.
I listened to that a lot and was really seduced by the great revenge motif in the song: "And they asked me which heads should fall, and the harbour fell quiet as I answered 'All'".
Along with more stylish split-screens, there's a great recurring motif of headlights in the night in this week's episode; along with the music, the visual cues are one of Fargo's real strengths.
Indeed, they still play the cheekily autobiographical "Tin Pan Valley" and the eerie "Another Tribe" – its "I want to reach out there across the great divide" motif so apposite on the night of the Syria vote in Parliament – from 2005's Mighty ReArranger album, made by their previous incarnation as Strange Sensation.
Interestingly, the bias is greater for motifs that are active than for those that are inactive, suggesting that additional factors influence the function of hotspot motifs, the selective forces that shape their dynamic repositioning over time, or both.
