Many parents with children know how hard it is to travel on long trips with them. In the short story “The Story Teller” by Saki, an aunt was traveling with 3 little children. When the tries to get the children’s attention, the children don’t respond to her and continue to disobey her. When a bachelor that was traveling in the same carriage as them starts to tell the offspring’s a story, the children, with hesitation at first, start to listen to him with excitement.
The bachelor seemed to know what story the children will like and what type of tone and language the story had to be told to get the children’s attention. In the first part of the story, the author presents a scene in which 3 children, their aunt and a bachelor were traveling all in the same carriage on a train. The children don’t seem to want to listen to their aunt and do what they please to do. The aunt tries to tell the children not to do things but all she gets n return is the question “Why?” The aunt then tells tem to move to the window so they could see what is happening outside.
The little boy kept on asking questions, which seemed logical but had no definite answers. The aunt seemed to be tired of all the questions so she starts to tell a story. The children again, get diverted from the story, and not pay attention. That’s when the bachelor comes into the picture. In the second part of the story, the bachelor successfully tells the children a story.
His imaginative story amazes the children. When the boy starts to question the bachelor, the unattached man replies to the boys question in a simple way. The bachelor seemed to entertain the children with his delightful story. When the story came to an end, the children exclaimed that that was the best story that they ever heard, even though at the beginning of the story they were protesting the story. The story was about this girl that was “horribly good” and was invited to the Princes garden.
At this garden, there were many pigs but no flowers. While the girl was walking through the garden, a wolf came out. The girl started to run away from the wolf. As soon as she got near a couple of bushes she hid in them.
The strong smell of the flowers covered the smell of the girl, so the girl was safe, until her medals, which she always wore, started to jingle against one another, so the wolf found the girl and ate her. When you are a parent and you are raising children, you try to not only be patient with the child, but also make their world funny and interesting. The aunt couldn’t keep the children calm while a stranger kept them not only quiet but entertained also. This story shows us that children don’t like to be told what the dull stories but want an assortment of enjoyable stories. There are a couple humorous moments that could be seen in this story. The first humorous part of this story is when the aunt, who is a relative of the kids, couldn’t get the children to be quiet, while a total stranger got them to be quiet in a matter of minutes.
Another humorous moment in this story is the story that was told by the bachelor, when the Prince in his garden has pigs and not flowers. In my opinion these were the humorous parts of the story.