With no clear plot or steady timeline, Alice Munro's "Circle of Prayer" is remarkably similar to how one perceives real life. Relationships, people, and events all come together in our stream of consciousness, which is both constant and unpredictable. The story is truly a slice of life, conveying typical day to day activities rather than a complex storyline leading up to an explosive climax. The reader is given an inside view of the different relationships explored in the story, such as the mother-daughter relationship between Trudy and Robin and the married life of Trudy and Dan. The vivid descriptions of how each character thinks and reacts to varying life situations allow the reader to easily relate due to their intense realism. .
One example of this realism can be found in the description of Tracy Lee's funeral. The intricate description of the funeral home made the reader feel as if they were there themselves. "The curtains were closed. Soft music was playing-not exactly church music but it sounded like it. Tracy Lee's coffin was white with gold trim, matching all the brocade and the wallpaper." By providing such details, Munro imitates the process by which the minds of the characters actually there would notice the visual surroundings. As the girls began to walk past the coffin, Munro provided the imagery of the girls' unusal ritual by stating, "All this jewelry went flashing and sparkling down on the dead girl, beside her in her coffin." The way the teenage girls got caught up in the emotional intensity of the funeral allows the reader to experience how teenage girls really think and act. Munro's realistic description shows her deep insight of how different types of people think and react to the normal experiences of life. .
Another way that Munro conveys the thoughts of her characters is by inserting lines of their actual thought. As Trudy and Robinm are fighting about the necklace and Trudy throws a jug across the room, Munro interrupts the dialogue to place the characters' exact thoughts in the text.