I jabber some more

I've been reading Card's The Worthing Saga, which includes some of his earliest fiction (apparently much-revised). The first half or so is made up of The Worthing Chronicle, which is a set of stories from all over the history of a planet told within a frame tale — he was studying medieval literature as he realized that the whole thing needed to tied together better. What's interesting is how engaging the frame tale structure is even though you have no real idea why it's being told at all, much less to our child narrator, or where the whole thing is going at all. Then, quite suddenly, you see that it has all been about what memories are so important that they are preserved for generations, about the necessity of conflict, both in life and in any story worth telling. It was a nice surprise theme.