Structure
“Bujak and the Strong Force” by Martin Amis can be considered more of a novella than a short story, because the text is quite long and the characters are well-established (the main difference between a novella and a …
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Beginning
The novella begins by hooking the readers’ attention with a rhetorical question which introduces them to the main character of the novella, Bujak: “Bujak? Yeah, I knew him. The whole street knew Bujak. I knew him be…
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Middle
The middle presents the narrator’s interactions with Bujak, starting from the day the man helped him fix a flat tire: “I first met Bujak one wintry morning in the late spring of 1980 – or of PN 35, if you use the post-nuclear calendar that he sometimes favoured. Michiko’s car had something wrong with it…” (p. 2, ll. 6-9)
The rising action is constructed by presenting the contrasts between Bujak and the narrator, both physically and in terms of perspective.
First, the narrator finds more about Bujak by asking around in the neighbourhood: “In the streets, the pubs, the shops, they spoke of him as a fixer and han…
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Ending
The ending presents the falling action, five years later, after the narrator moved to New York, going after his girlfriend Michiko, who became his wife. After five years, the narrator pays a visit to Bujak in London who still lives in the same neighbourhood: “Incredibly, his happiness was intact – unimpaired, entire. How come? Because, I think, his generosity e…