Structure

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Beginning

The exposition opens with the unnamed narrator reading the name “Springheel Jack” (l. 1) in a newspaper. Through a backstory, the narrator remembers events that happened during his time in college. The fact that he does not want to return home in spite of the murders happening around campus, and the fact that he is “Enchanted by that dark and mist-blown strawberry spring, and by the shadow of violent death that walked through it on those nights eight years ago” …

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Middle

The rising action is set in motion by the discovery of a dead body belonging to one of the college students. The girl’s body is severely wounded (ll. 37-38). The fact that she has been murdered in the Animal Sciences parking lot (l. 36) and that the narrator shows the police officer his student ID card “without the fangs” (ll. 57-58), foreshadows that he might have committed the crime and adds to the sinister atmosphere.

A tension point is created when the narrator’s roommate announces that the girl’s boyfriend has been arrested as a suspect. The narrator is “relieved and disappointed” (l. 71). This remark shows his dual attitude towards the events. On one hand…

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Ending

The last murder happens on “the last unspeakable night of strawberry spring” (l. 221), after which “the president of the college announced that spring break would be moved up a week” (ll. 229-230), and the killer disappears with the fog (l. 241). The breaking of the weather also marks the falling action of the story:

That night the thermometer dropped fifteen degrees, and the whole northern New England area was belted by a shrieking norther that began in sleet and ended in a foo…