The Storyteller

The Storyteller is a short simple story written by Saki, a British author and storyteller. In it, the author attempts to highlight the importance of storytelling. It’s a really simple story, and doesn’t have much to be interpreted or read in to, so I’ll provide you with a brief summary.

The story begins with 3 small children, accompanied by their aunt, boarding a train. As they enter they find that a single bachelor  is sharing the compartment with them. As the train drives through long stretches of empty countryside, the children begin to pester their aunt by asking question after question. Eventually, in an attempt to shut them up, the aunt tries to tell them a story. Her story is about a girl who was very good and who won the affection of many because of her goodness and thus, when she was found herself attacked by a mad bull, the friendly villagers came together and saved her.

Her story sucked and the kids made no attempt to hide this from her.

“It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard!”, is an actual line from one of the children in the story to describe her take on the aunt’s stupid story.

The bachelor passes a comment on the aunt’s poor storytelling abilities to which she promptly retorts that maybe he should try telling them a story. He agrees and begins.

In his story, there is a girl called Bertha. She’s a good girl and has 3 medals she’d won because of her goodness. In fact, she was so good, that the prince allowed her to come visit his exclusive park. In this park there were no flowers, just pigs. Still, the park was exceptionally beautiful. As Bertha walked through the park, a wolf entered the park, looking for a sheep to eat; it saw Bertha and chased her. Bertha ran and hid in one of the massive bushes, trembling in fear. The wolf had given up and was turning away when it heard the sound of her medals jingling as she trembled in fear. It knew where she was and promptly ate her.

The End.

At that point, the train was pulling in at a station. The bachelor stood up to leave and an angry aunt scolded him for undoing all the good morals she’d been instilling in the children for years. The piece ends with his retort that at least he was able to keep them quiet for 10 minutes, a task she failed to accomplish.

The author shows a rather sarcastic take on dialectic stories in this piece, and challenges the conventional fact that all stories must pass on good or meaningful morals. The fact that the ‘good’ story told by the aunt fails to gain the kids’ attention whereas his does, explores the concept that poetic justice is more often than not reserved for the books and sometimes there’s nothing wrong with an improper story.

Another important aspect of the story is the way that the children’s continuous volleys of questions help the bachelor frame his story, rather than derail it. For every question they ask he gives a detailed and justified response, and steers his story in a new direction. This gives a sense of interactivity and freshness to the story. This can be seen as being indicative of how seniors should interact with and treat children. This can also be seen as a praise of the dying tradition of storytelling; the rawness and non-linearity present in storytelling are aptly shown throughout the piece.