But what purpose can simple repetition serve?
Some of the more affecting pieces involve simple repetition.
Sometimes simple repetition is used as a device.
Simple repetition – practising retrieving a memory over and over again – is the best form of consolidating the pattern.
What may look like simple repetition of a familiar story – migrants die at sea – is in fact a more complicated, and less accidental, sequel.
But this is not done by simple repetition, so although you may be relaxed, you are engaged all the time and there is little opportunity for the mind to wander.
And waiting to find out whether they have, via the power of simple repetition, pulled off the same trick with other phrases and concepts yoked in suddenly binary opposition.
These include Alex Szogyi's A Country Scandal (1961), Michael Frayn's Wild Honey (1984), and Trevor Griffiths Pianoo (1990), three plays that could themselves be staged as a trilogy without much simple repetition.
When Aunt Sadie hears the Andrews Sisters' tune from her high school prom over and over again, her experience is a simple repetition, more or less accurate, given the quality of her musical ear and memory.
But the simple repetition of cooking and eating brings the family together, softening the hard edges like boiling water on rice.Was America better for the family or did the move make everything harder?
