Most textbooks, ignoring current narrative theory, fail to explain a large number of published essays containing narrative. To challenge textbook definitions of narratives, three points should be made: (1) a clear distinction should be recognized between narratives making points and narratives proving points, (2) the textbook equating of "narrative" with "story" obscures some of the ways that narrative functions in essays, and (3) narrative should be understood not as a device but as a fundamental mode of persuasion. Making a point is not just "balancing an equation"; it is also establishing a juncture that exists to enable writers to state propositions. In "My Magical Metronome" Lewis Thomas's reflections on his acquisition of a pacemaker lead gracefully to ideas about medical technology. Narrative movement takes the reader from some place (literally and metaphorically) to some other place, a different point. Essays can exhibit three degrees of narrative: essays with narrative, essays with story, and essays as story. At the moment a narrative becomes a story, it has a point, and if it has a point it is a story. Textbook writers usually ignore the fact that the power of narrative in essay comes not from the writer's ability to mirror reality, but from offering it to the reader in a particularly attractive shape. The function of narrative in essays is best defined as the idea of getting readers from one event to another, from one point to another. (NKA)