• The Storyteller Short Story Summary
• Image Of The Storyteller Short Story
• The Storyteller Jim Henson A Story Short
• The Storyteller Short Story

I will try to add a few short stories every month. The Storyteller (Saki) by H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916) Approximate Word Count: 2109 I t was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl. Every storyteller is in the expectations-management business and must take responsibility for leading listeners effectively through the story experience, incorporating both surprise and fulfillment.

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly that refuses to be discouraged. Most of the aunt's remarks seemed to begin with 'Don't,' and nearly all of the children's remarks began with 'Why?' The bachelor said nothing out loud. 'Don't, Cyril, don't,' exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.

'Come and look out of the window,' she added.

The child moved reluctantly to the window. 'Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?' he asked.

'I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass,' said the aunt weakly.

'But there is lots of grass in that field,' protested the boy; 'there's nothing else but grass there. Aunt, there's lots of grass in that field.'

'Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,' suggested the aunt fatuously.

'Why is it better?' came the swift, inevitable question.

'Oh, look at those cows!' exclaimed the aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.

'Why is the grass in the other field better?' persisted Cyril.

The frown on the bachelor's face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.

The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite 'On the Road to Mandalay.' She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.

'Come over here and listen to a story,' said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.

The children moved listlessly towards the aunt's end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story- teller did not rank high in their estimation.

In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questionings from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.

'Wouldn't they have saved her if she hadn't been good?' demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.

'Well, yes,' admitted the aunt lamely, 'but I don't think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.'

'It's the stupidest story I've ever heard,' said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.

'I didn't listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,' said Cyril.

The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.

'You don't seem to be a success as a story-teller,' said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.

The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.

'It's a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate,' she said stiffly.

'I don't agree with you,' said the bachelor.

'Perhaps you would like to tell them a story,' was the aunt's retort.

'Tell us a story,' demanded the bigger of the small girls.

'Once upon a time,' began the bachelor, 'there was a little girl called Bertha, who was extra-ordinarily good.'

The children's momentarily-aroused interest began at once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter who told them.

'She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.'

'Was she pretty?' asked the bigger of the small girls.

'Not as pretty as any of you,' said the bachelor, 'but she was horribly good.'

There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt's tales of infant life.

'She was so good,' continued the bachelor, 'that she won several medals for goodness, which she always wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clicked against one another as she walked. No other child in the town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody knew that she must be an extra good child.'

'Horribly good,' quoted Cyril.

'Everybody talked about her goodness, and the Prince of the country got to hear about it, and he said that as she was so very good she might be allowed once a week to walk in his park, which was just outside the town. It was a beautiful park, and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a great honour for Bertha to be allowed to go there.'

'Were there any sheep in the park?' demanded Cyril.

'No;' said the bachelor, 'there were no sheep.'

'Why weren't there any sheep?' came the inevitable question arising out of that answer.

The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might almost have been described as a grin.

The Storyteller Short Story Summary

'There were no sheep in the park,' said the bachelor, 'because the Prince's mother had once had a dream that her son would either be killed by a sheep or else by a clock falling on him. For that reason the Prince never kept a sheep in his park or a clock in his palace.'

The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.

'Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?' asked Cyril.

'He is still alive, so we can't tell whether the dream will come true,' said the bachelor unconcernedly; 'anyway, there were no sheep in the park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the place.'

'What colour were they?'

'Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all over.'

The storyteller paused to let a full idea of the park's treasures sink into the children's imaginations; then he resumed:

'Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind Prince's flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no flowers to pick.'

'Why weren't there any flowers?'

Image Of The Storyteller Short Story

'Because the pigs had eaten them all,' said the bachelor promptly. 'The gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn't have pigs and flowers, so he decided to have pigs and no flowers.'

There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince's decision; so many people would have decided the other way.

'There were lots of other delightful things in the park. There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment's notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down and enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: 'If I were not so extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed to come into this beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to be seen in it,' and her three medals clinked against one another as she walked and helped to remind her how very good she really was. Just then an enormous wolf came prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its supper.'

'What colour was it?' asked the children, amid an immediate quickening of interest.

'Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she could, and the wolf came after her with huge leaps and bounds. She managed to reach a shrubbery of myrtle bushes and she hid herself in one of the thickest of the bushes. The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with rage. Bertha was terribly frightened, and thought to herself: 'If I had not been so extraordinarily good I should have been safe in the town at this moment.' However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf could not sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were so thick that he might have hunted about in them for a long time without catching sight of her, so he thought he might as well go off and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming with ferocity and triumph, and dragged Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness.'

'Were any of the little pigs killed?'

'No, they all escaped.'

'The story began badly,' said the smaller of the small girls, 'but it had a beautiful ending.'

'It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard,' said the bigger of the small girls, with immense decision.

'It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,' said Cyril.

A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.

The Storyteller Jim Henson A Story Short

'A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching.'

'At any rate,' said the bachelor, collecting his belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, 'I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.'

'Unhappy woman!' he observed to himself as he walked down the platform of Templecombe station; 'for the next six months or so those children will assail her in public with demands for an improper story!'

Return to the H.H. Munro (SAKI) Home Page, or . . . Read the next short story; The Strategist

The Storyteller Short Story

1. 1

   How do the morals of the bachelor’s tale and the aunt’s story connect to the works of some of the most respected and renowned philosophers through the ages, like St. Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche?

   The difference is nothing less than a philosophical divergence on the issue of morality. In its own modest way, “The Storyteller” is a meditation upon much more immodest conceptions of the nature of ethical behavior upon which entire volumes have been written by such distinguished figures from the world of philosophy as St. Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche. The moral of the story told by the aunt is that good acts shall always be rewarded in the end. By contrast, the bachelor’s story strongly suggests that even those endowed with the highest ethical character are every bit as much at risk for coming to a bad end as the worst kind of amoral scoundrel.

2. 2

   The bachelor’s offer to take over the storytelling duties from the children’s aunt seems to be based on an intention to keep the children from becoming unruly, but what might be another less charitable intent?

   While the darker aspect and more realistic insight into the nature of morality in his story is clearly chosen as a way to capture and maintain the attention of the bored children, those very same elements seem to have been chosen specifically as a means of goading the aunt. The fact that the bachelor’s story essentially upends the entire philosophical view toward morality and ethical behavior which the aunt struggles vainly to get across in her story can be viewed less as a genuine insight into the bachelor’s perspective on the same issue and more as insight into the nature of his character. He may simply find the aunt’s insistent moral-mongering so distasteful that he decides to relate a story that tears it to pieces solely for the mischief of dragging her lofty ideals back down to earth in full view of the children.

3. 3

   Identify the conflict in this story and justify an opinion on the ultimate victor in this conflict.

   The conflict that provides the dramatic tension in “The Storyteller” is clearly between the aunt and the bachelor, or more precisely, between the aunt’s rather obvious view that stories told to children require a definite moral and the bachelor’s apparent view that the entertainment value of stories trumps any lesson they might teach. “The Storyteller” thus becomes an example of how dramatic tension created by the conflict between two people can end with one side irrefutably vanquished yet with no physical harm done. The bachelor is the winner in this conflict of opposing ideologies on the most reasonable basis for judgment: the children are enraptured by his story after being left restless and bored by the story told by their aunt.

4. 4

   How is the ending of the bachelor’s story an example of irony?

   The story-within-the-story of Bertha and her medals is an excellent example of irony. The entire point that the bachelor is trying to make with his story is that the aunt’s insistence that good deeds will always result in reward is misguided. Bertha becomes the very iconic symbol of a good person: she actually receives a number of medals honoring this very facet of her personality. In any story told by the aunt, Bertha would come to a rewarding end by virtue of her demonstrable moral superiority. Therefore, the ending actually possesses two levels of irony. There is the irony of Bertha as a model of the aunt’s moral view coming to a horrific end regardless and there is the irony that Bertha’s horrific end comes about directly as a result of being awarded medals for her high standards of goodness.

5. 5

   How does Saki create symbolism through colors in 'The Storyteller'?

   In 'The Storyteller,' Saki uses colors to create themes and further draw out the symbolism of animals in the bachelor's story. When the bachelor describes the park, he pays special attention to the beautiful, colorful animals, writing, 'There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment's notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day' (6). In contrast, other animals in the park - the pigs and wold - have dark, less pleasant colors: black, white, and gray. These animals represent the darkness of reality, in contrast to the paradisical atmosphere of the park created mostly by the description of colors. The dark colors of the wolf also contrast with the white of Bertha's dress, representing her innocence and purity. Thus, Saki shows innocence being destroyed not only by having an animal devour a proper female child, but also by symbolically showing the color black dominate the color white.

6. 6

   How did H. H. Munro's early life influence his writing in terms of content and style?

   H. H. Munro was born in Burma when it was under the British Raj. However, when his mother died in a tragic, sudden event, he was sent to live in England with his siblings and his aunt. He found the English education system oppressive and highly disliked the way his aunt behaved toward him and his sisters, especially with regard to desired behaviors and discipline.

   The author's antipathy toward English education and parenting is clear in the short story 'The Storyteller' where a bright, aloof man (who can be seen as a representation the author) questions the authority of an aunt attempting to control three children. Indeed, many of the major themes of the story have to do with childhood, education, and the moral values instilled (or not) in children such as curiosity and imagination. Thus, one can gather that his upbringing had a large influence on the content of his stories.

   Furthermore, Munro's alienation and dissatisfaction in his childhood likely influenced his witty and satirical style, which has garnered him international and enduring fame.

7. 7

   In what ways do the two main stories in 'The Storyteller' (the frame story of the people on the train and the bachelor's story) parallel one another?

   Parallels can easily be drawn between the characters in the train car and those in the bachelor's story. In the train car, the bachelor takes over the responsibility of storytelling from the aunt and tells the children a story which excites them but instills values that are against those of their aunt and perhaps their society as a whole. Within the bachelor's story, Bertha is a good little girl who was found and eventually eaten by a wolf, questioning the point of all her moral learning. Furthermore, her innocence and purity are symbolically destroyed by the dark wolf ripping up and leaving behind her white dress. The wolf can be seen to parallel the bachelor, and Bertha the children, which calls into question the bachelor's callous behavior. Through this parallel, Saki shows that he questions not only the aunt's methods of raising children, but also the bachelor's responsibility and involvement with them.