The Open Window By Saki

Have you ever been scared to death? In “The Open Window” by Saki, he writes about a man who goes to a house to get help for his anxiety. He meets a young teenage girl named Vera, who tells him that the reason the window is always kept open is because her aunt’s husband and sons went on a hunting trip near the swamp and never returned. Mrs. Sappleton still waits for them by keeping the window open. Vera had actually fibbed about the whole story so when Vera’s family really does come back from the trip, Mr. Nuttel is frightened that he’s going insane and sees ghosts. Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) uses the element of imagery in “The Open Window” through the description of the story that Vera tells, how realistic the story looks from Mr. Nuttell's …show more content…
Nuttel’s phobia of dogs. “I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve” (14). Vera explains to her aunt and family that Mr. Nuttel left just because of the dogs. She says that he told her a story about him being chased into a cemetery by a pack of dogs and that’s what caused his horror of the …show more content…
She needed something to entertain herself and Mr. Nuttel was going to be just the man to do it. I think the overall theme of the story would be deception. Vera deceives Mr. Nuttel first, telling him the story about the never-returning men and at the end of the story when Mr. Nuttel runs out of the house and Vera explains to her family that he has an insane fear of dogs. The author shows us imagery when Vera tells the story of her uncle and cousin’s death to Mr. Nuttel, how realistic the story looks from Mr. Nuttell's point of view, and how Vera explains Mr. Nuttel’s phobia of dogs to her