“In this sense the play’s impulse is essentially an (auto)biographical one. Remember, creating a life narrative involves establishing a narrative standpoint (an endpoint toward which the life events will move), selecting the key events of the life, and finding the cause-and-effect-based pattern of events that lead to the endpoint. Note that this process is governed by the premise of before and after. Each selected life event can be seen as a cause of some subsequent effect and thus can be considered as a turning point, a dividing line between before and after. In telling the story in reverse order, however, Merrily We Roll Along shatters the illusion of narrative coherence. The pattern of events, the cause and effect, and the significance of turning points lose their naturalness, their impression of inevitability, when regarded backward instead of forward. The play’s backward structure, like the ghosts in Follies, fragments the coherence of individual identity.”