"The Replacement," by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet, is a short sketch, or vignette, which touches on multiple plots simultaneously. This sketch was gathered with others and published in the 1962 book Instantanes, or Snapshots." The title is an accurate description of this type of short story, which does not contain a typical beginning or ending, only a middle, a moment of time captured in words.

The story begins with a young boy walking up to a tree that has caught his eye. He reaches for the lowest branches of the tree, trying several times to stretch his arm to meet the branch. After several attempts, he stares at the tree, contemplating something unknown. The boy examines the bark of the tree very closely, with the intensity of a scientist studying a slide.

The next paragraph of the story begins with a description of a boy who...