A general theoretical framework for studying the representation of prose in memory is presented. The framework emphasizes the relational structure of story characters as determined by major story themes. In the first of two experiments, subjects made similarity judgments on a set of animal concepts both before and after reading two specially constructed stories in which these animals were characters. Judgments were submitted to a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. The results indicated that: (a) The location of story characters in multidimensional space described the readers' representation of the thematic structure relating the characters of each story; (b) each story context acted to specify the particular set of conceptual relations that consituted the themes of that story; (c) the methodology employed allowed for empirical consideration of author—reader communication, and some possible limitations in such communication were suggested. In a second study, Same—Different reaction time judgments on the characters of one of the stories were shown to be related to specific concept distances derived from the previously obtained MDS solution of the story. A spatial model and a parallel feature analysis model of the decision process were developed, and parameters were estimated. The results of both experiments were considered in terms of the framework initially presented.