Structure

The short story “Blink and You Miss It” by Alex Garland is structured as a flashback story. This means that the narration begins at a present moment and leaps back in time; in other words, the main plot takes place before the time of the narrative. However, the story also respects the elements of the plot (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution).

Title

The title of the short story creates mystery as it does not let readers know what the plot is about; it only hints that something important happens in the story in a flash moment as short as the blink of an eye. After reading the story, the title becomes an allusion to both the introduction in which the narrator imagines seeing his neighbour from England and to the climax, when he is caught in one...

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Beginning

The short story begins in media res (in the middle of events) with the narrator ‘seeing’ his neighbour from England trying to cross the street: “About twenty seconds ago, I blinked, saw a window and outside it, my next-door neighbour's kid, Sammy. Sammy recently turned five. He was standing on the far side of the road and wanted to cross over.”

This event gets the author thinking about growing up to lose one’s common sense and compares himself to Sammy.

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Middle

The middle of the short story constructs the rising action and the climax, set in the past, in the hippie community.

In the rising action, the narrator presents life there, in which a guru was the leader, and the other people his followers; a life in which drug use was something common. The first foreshadowing element is introduced as the narrator warns readers about the guru (who, as it turned out, tricked him and got him arrested): “Being seventeen and in a free-fall, I didn't see this guy for what he was. So I listened to his stupid travel stories.”

The first tension point is introduced when the narrator begins to focus on the organisation of a full moon party by the community and, just before, the police raids the beach for drugs: “Substances, a shortage of. The bust had come a week ago, a horde of green uniformed men, ripping through the beach huts and upending backpacks.”

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Ending

In the falling action, the narrator realises that it was all a trap. The police needed to catch someone so that the drug dealers could resume their activity. Also, the falling action presents the narrator writing to Sammy,...

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