How does the author structure the short story, Tyres?

The short story defies conventional notions of the linear narrative plot line. Indeed, the narrator is relaying his account “in the warm (oh so warm!) glow of hindsight” (400). In the narrative present, the narrator is a middle-aged man detailing the events that transpired during WWII. He is still living in the same remote French village and working at his father’s tire shop. Despite this temporal distance from the war, the narrator’s consciousness in the presence remains haunted by these past events.

For these reasons, the narrative toggles between the past and the present throughout the short story. On the story’s first page, the narrator attempts to embrace a linear mode of storytelling, and begins his account saying, “My father started the business in 1925, the year of my birth” (396). His subsequent descriptions take place chronologically and describe the narrator’s early involvement in the business. However, once the narrator and his family see their “first German limousine,” the narrative begins to toggle between the past and present more often (397). The war therefore deforms the narrator’s sense of linear time. In particular, the narrator begins to interrupt his descriptions of life during the war with increased frequency. He tries to remain focused on the events of the past, but often interjects retrospective remarks about these years. His inability to remain narratively grounded in one temporal era is inspired by his complex relationship with the war and therefore enacts the ways in which the events of the 1940s continue to affect him in the present. Indeed, in the short story’s final paragraph, the narrator admits that he is still trying “to explain [Cécile’s] presence in the car” although he doubts that “anyone really cares, or even remembers her very much” (407). For the narrator, however, Cécile remains a permanent fixture in his mind. He is desperate to tell his story despite the emotional repercussions, because he does not want to forget her and because he wants to atone for his involvement in her death. In these ways, the narrative’s unconventional structure captures and conveys the narrator’s internal experience over time.