Fail Again, Fail Better: Narrative Repetition and the Failure of Transmission

This article proposes a revision of the teleological model of narrative advanced by Peter Brooks in Reading for the Plot. While Brooks understands narrative as an economy of desire oriented toward the end, where meaning ultimately becomes intelligible, this essay argues that narrative is driven not by teleological closure but by the structural limits of symbolization. Drawing on the psychoanalytic frameworks of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the article proposes that narrative repetition arises from a structural mismatch between the Real and the Symbolic: something resists full symbolization and returns as a renewed demand for meaning. Repetition thus does not resolve narrative tension but reactivates the necessity of interpretation. This logic is traced through two canonical cases — Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Kafka's The Trial and The Castle — before being examined in detail through an analysis of Mother! by Darren Aronofsky, a film whose narrative structure performs precisely this circuit of failure and repetition. The essay concludes by proposing an alternative model of narrative structure: not tension–delay–resolution, but failure–demand for meaning–renewed symbolization.