Summary and structure

In what follows, we will focus on the summary and structure of “Dead as They Come” by Ian McEwan.

Summary

A rich middle-aged man falls in love with a dummy, a clothing store mannequin. After several months looking at it in the window, the man names the dummy Helen and becomes convinced that the two of them belong together. He purchases it after inventing a story about the dummy and its clothes being a gift for his wife.

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Structure

The short story is structured in the form of a first-person account of the main character who describes his relationship with a lifeless mannequin that he treats as a living person.

The narrative is very detailed and descriptive, rather than being focussed on action, but it respects the elements of a traditional plot—exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Title

The title of the short story, “Dead as they come”, refers to the lifeless condition of shop mannequins and hints at the resolution of the short story. Although the dummy was lifeless from the start, the main character considered it alive and treated it like a living person,until he eventually ‘killed’ it, making it as dead, as she was from the start.

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Beginning

The short story begins with a rather long exposition in which the narrator presents himself and the object of his affection, a window mannequin. Readers are hooked and drawn into the story by the fact that, in the beginning, the narrator does not state that the mannequin is a lifeless dummy: "I do not care for posturing women. But she struck me. I had to stop and look at her. The legs were well apart, the right foot...

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Middle

The rising action develops once the man decides to purchase the mannequin. It is in this part that we finally find out explicitly that the ‘woman’ he names Helen is a lifeless dummy: "I wanted the dummy (ah my Helen) on which these clothes were displayed in order to show off the clothes to their best advantage." (p. 74, ll. 7-9)

The story follows the imaginary relationship the narrator creates with the dummy after he buys it. All the tension points in the story are only imagined by the narrator, who treats the dummy as a living woman named Helen.

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Ending

The ending of the short story includes a brief falling action as the narrator faints after ‘killing’ the...

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