Analyzing Saki's "The Open Window"

            “The Open Window” by Hector Hugh Munro, who is better known by the pseudonym Saki, is an ironic short story. Letters of introduction, formal visits, and polite conversation with total strangers are revealed as empty and trite in “The Open Window.” It is a thematic mockery on the principles of social etiquette. In this essay, I will analyze the story. I am going to break the story down into parts to show what parts of the story are portrayed through which elements.

            The first element is the exposition. The purpose of the exposition- to set the tone and mood, introduce the characters and setting, and provide necessary background information- is achieved. In the exposition, the narrator provides the reader with necessary background information to help create the setting and the mood by informing the reader about Mr. Nuttel’s sister (Mr. Nuttel will be more thoroughly introduced in the next paragraph) and her letters of introduction. Mr. Nuttel is introduced as a nervous guy versus Vera (who will also be introduced more thoroughly in the next paragraph) who is a very self-possessed young woman. Overall, the exposition is reached when the nervous Mr. Nuttel and self-possessed Vera meet.

            In “The Open Window,” the character of Framton Nuttel is created and introduced through direct description and portrayal of behavior, two techniques of characterization. Placed opposite the ineffective and earnest Mr. Nuttel is Vera. “My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said Vera, a very poised fifteen year old, creating the setting. Mr. Nuttel tried to say the “correct something” to compliment Vera while awaiting Mrs. Sappleton, which sets the mood as nervous and uncomfortable. Vera is Mrs. Sappleton’s niece, who has a rather eccentric approach to formal visits and polite conversation with strangers, while Mr. Nuttel is more of a nervous guy.

            The second element is the inciting incident, which is the event that introduces the central conflict. The inciting incident occurs when Vera mentions her aunt’s “great tragedy” and the open window. It all began when Mr. Nuttel met Vera, and she began to tell him the story of her aunt’s tragedy of her husband, two brothers, and dog. For Mr. Nuttel, tragedies seemed out of place because it was restful country spot. Vera asked Mr. Nuttel if he knew people there, and in turn, he told her about his sister and her letters of introduction.

            Mr. Nuttel was supposed to be undergoing nerve treatment. His sister told him when he was preparing to migrate that he would bury himself there not speaking to a living soul, and his nerves would be worse than ever from moping. So she decided she would just give him letters of introduction to all the people she knew there. That is how he met Vera. He didn’t think that the formal visits to complete strangers would do any good towards helping his nerve cure. Then, Vera questioned if Mr. Nuttel knew her aunt, and he replied only her name and address.

            In the next element, the rising action develops the conflict to a high point of intensity. In this story the rising action is reached when Vera dramatically relates a story about how her aunt’s husband, two brothers, and dog left through the window to go hunting and never returned. “Her great tragedy happened just three years ago; that would be since your sister’s time,” said Vera. “You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece indicating a large French window. Then, she continued on with her story.

            Three years ago, her husband and two brothers went off with the dog for their days shooting through that window, but never came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite bird hunting ground they were all engulfed in a perilous piece of marsh, and their bodies were never recovered. As Vera told her story, she lost her self-possessed voice and became a faltering human. She claims her aunt always thinks that they’ll come back some day with the little brown spaniel that was lost with them and walk in that window just as they used to, and that is why the window is kept open every evening until dusk. She often says how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing, ‘Bertie, why do you bond?’ as he always did to tease her because it got on her nerves. Vera says on still quiet evenings she gets a creepy feeling that they will walk in that window.

            The fourth element is the climax, the true high point of interest in the story. Mr. Nuttel was relieved when Mrs. Sappleton came into the room with apologies for being late in making her appearance. “I hope you don’t mind the open window; my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way,” Mrs. Sappleton informed Mr. Nuttel. She continued on cheerfully about the shooting and the insufficiency of birds and the predictions for duck in the winter, but to Mr. Nuttel, it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less frightful topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window. He felt it an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

            Mr. Nuttel was telling Mrs. Sappleton about his nerve treatment, and then she suddenly brightened into alert attention- but not to what Mr. Nuttel was saying. “Here they are at last!” she cried, “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to their eyes!” Mr. Nuttel shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to express sympathetic understanding, but the child stared out through the window, dazed with terror. In a chill shock of nameless fear, he swung around in his seat and looked in the same direction, and there were three figures walking across the lawn towards the window, carrying guns under their arms, one with a white coat hung over his shoulders, followed by a tired, brown spaniel kept close at their heels. They quietly neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you band?” The climax is frightening because as Mr. Nuttel chats with Mrs. Sappleton, the three hunters and their dog stroll toward the window, expected by the family, but unexpected and impossible to comprehend for Mr. Nuttel.

Following the climax is the falling action. Once Mr. Nuttel saw them coming, he grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his head long retreat. The hunters questioned Mrs. Sappleton about who bolted out as they came up, and she told the guys that Mr. Nuttel was an extraordinary man who could only talk about his illnesses and dashed off without a word goodbye or apology. Vera claims to expect it was the spaniel because Mr. Nuttel told her he had a horror of dogs. According to Vera, he was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges  by a pack of outcast dogs and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling, grinning, and foaming just above him. Romance at short notice was Vera’s specialty.

In conclusion, the dramatic irony in the story is that the reader knows that Vera’s story is a lie, and Mr. Nuttel does not. The story’s conflicts include the external struggle between Mr. Nuttel and Vera and the internal struggle within Mr. Nuttel between his nervous and reclusive tendencies and his decision to try to calm his nerves by meeting total strangers. The situational irony occurs when the hunters return, violating Mr. Nuttel’s expectation that they are dead. When Mr. Nuttel expects to be welcomed by “nice” people, he instead ends up being driven away. Also, when Mr. Nuttel expects to calm himself through social interaction, he becomes highly agitated.