Theme

The main theme of the short story “Blink and You Miss It” by Alex Garland is the effects of drugs, enhanced through the motifs of naivety and regret.

The effects of drug use

The short story follows a young character narrator – at the age of seventeen – as he enters a hippie community on a beach in Thailand (led by a guru) and that is mostly joined by drug use. The members of the community seem to be drawn both to the personality of the guru and drugs. But given that they seem to be constant drug users and that the guru is a scam, it is safe to say that it is the drugs that make the community (the narrator included) take the guru for something that he is not. Consequently, the first effect of drug use the story hints at is the loss of common sense and the clouding of judgement. Although the guru behaves in an immoral way (sleeping with youngsters, encouraging drug use and living off their money), the narrator seems too naïve and incapable of seeing the guru’s real face.

Note that the story does not disclose how and why a seventeen-year-old English teenager ended up in Thailand. It may have been that the boy was already doing drugs and went to the country knowing that drugs were more readily available there. Also, he might have had problems with his family (which is never mentioned in...