"The Open Window" by Saki

5 snipe: a bird with a long straight beak which lives near rivers and marshes (= low land that is wet and sometimes flooded) (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

7 Ganges: a major river in India. In Thai we call it แม่น้ำคงคา.

7 pariah: a person who is not accepted by a social group, especially because he or she is not liked, respected or trusted (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

Stories and Storytelling: How many narratives do you think there are in this short story? Are they the same kind of story? tragic? comic? tragicomic? romantic? Notice how the story builds to create the effect that it has.

Movement: Le Guin, in "A Discussion of Story," suggests that "story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing." What changes are there in this story by Saki? What kinds of movement do you see? You can also explore what Jill Paton Walsh calls "a trajectory—not necessarily an outline or synopsis to follow, but a movement to follow: the shape of a movement, whether it be straight ahead or roundabout or recurrent or eccentric."

Tida Navakul

2202232 Introduction to the Study of English Fiction

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 16, 2008

Reading Response

From Lady to Child: The Moving Identity of Vera

Vera is first introduced in Saki’s "The Open Window" as "a self-possessed young lady of fifteen" (4). This identity quickly slides into the next, less mature-sounding, one even as she acts in the very adult role of playing host to the nervous Mr. Framton Nuttel who is visiting for the first time with a letter of introduction from his sister. By the second sentence, the young lady in control of the conversation is referred to as the niece, identified merely as a temporary replacement for her aunt through their kinship. We soon see behind the young lady niece who receives her uneasy house guest with such poise. The story turns out not to be a simple parlor scene when yet another identity is revealed: "'Her [aunt's] great tragedy happened just three years ago,' said the child" (5). This dramatic shift from lady to child makes one wonder. What has transpired seems to be an exposition to a different development. "'Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?' pursued the self-possessed young lady" becomes not the voice of a grown up niece making polite drawing room conversation but that of a child gauging her audience in setting up a game. While the men are out snipe-shooting for their entertainment, the child at home is doing some hunting of her own. Vera, stalking her prey, we realize when the aunt arrives and asks whether she is "amusing you [Mr. Nuttel]," is ironically amusing herself (6). The movement of Vera's identity from lady to niece to child suggests that perhaps what she would rather be is none of these. Perhaps what she most prefers has nothing to do with age, but activity. Tracked through Vera's moving identity, this short story is a conflict of desire, of a child trapped in the role of a young lady. She wants excitement and adventure, and, thwarted, seeks them where she can, making do with "romance at short notice" as her "specialty" (7). In the end, she is not even Vera. Operating as she does in fiction rather than in truth, she is perhaps more suited to "authoress."

conflict, internal conflict, external conflict, clash of actions, clash of ideas, clash of desires, clash of wills

protagonist
antagonist (antagonistic)
suspense (suspenseful)
mystery (mysterious, mysteriously, mysteriousness)
dilemma
surprise (surprising, surprised)

artistic unity (unified)
time sequence
exposition
complication (complicate)
rising action
falling action
crisis
climax
anti-climax (anti-climactic)
conclusion (conclude, conclusive)
resolution (resolve, resolving)
denouement
flashback, retrospect
foreshadowing

causality
plot structure
initiating incident
back-story
epiphany
reversal
catastrophe
beginning, middle, end
scene
chance, coincidence
double plot
subplot, underplot
deus ex machina
disclosure, discovery