Analysis of Sylvia C. Dodd's short story 'In an Instant'

This analytical essay is written about the short story called “in an instant” which is about a man called Ben sanders and a girl whom he meets on the bus on the way to work, the analysis is going to cover the narrator, the setting, and combine the main message with a conclusion on the eventful story. The short story is written by the author Sylvia C. Dodd, which in this short story has written a fictional story about the afterlife.

In the story “in an instant”, we come across an unknown narrator telling a story about Ben Sanders's last day alive. Ben is our main character best described as a typical middle-aged fellow, living a regular life in a regular house with a pet cat, working a day-to-day job at the bookstore. The perspective we are introduced with is probably best described by the term omniscient, which means the narrator knows everything about the characters, this is shown at the start of the story, where we meet Ben, at this moment the narrator already knows how the day plays out, implying that Ben would have been better prepared for the day, if he knew what was in store for him, with the sentence “he would have emptied the fridge, or put more food out for the cat”. Throughout the story, the narrator knows what Ben is feeling and what he is thinking. This narrator stays anonymous throughout the story and is never revealed, but some information can be interpreted here because the narrator seems to be closely related to Ben, this is shown by the way the narrator seems to know personal information about Ben, like how Ben is a person who dislikes being unprepared and how he was looking forward to a brisk morning walk. The narrator takes usage of the narration mode of thought and monologue, which implies that Dialogue, thought, and monologue moves the story along, build tension, and reveal something about the character, which is exactly what happens in the story, where the narrator talks about the crash like Ben is still alive, but then revealing that Ben passed away in the crash. Since the narrator is writing in an omniscient way, the story could have been written, as Ben is the narrator, but without stating it, this could mean that it is Ben in the afterlife, talking about his day, but it seems weird that he would refer to himself as “Ben” and not “me”, but it seems possible as the narrator seems to tell the incident from Ben's perspective of the crash.