Satire in “The Storyteller”

Saki in the story  The Storyteller  makes fun of the way of teaching back when he was still young. He makes exaggerations on how boring it can get and how it produces an negative effect, not calming the children down. He makes the aunt tell a boring and normal story which actually wouldn't result with a landslide of questions from the children, however he makes the children ask too many questions. On the other hand he makes the bachelor tell a rather weird story, one without an happy ending, one that is not proper teaching for the children. The improper story catches the children's attention and actually make them quiet! IN real life those types of stories, ones you have never heard of before would causes more questions to be made, but this is not the case. The children sit back and listen, they don't make as much noise. The satire of the story is the way of teaching they had wasn't always right and it was too strict that was what Saki was making fun of. When he was younger he himself experienced this strict way of teaching, and that is why he makes a satire about it. He wants to show how the strict teaching was not the perfect way of teaching and it is one that irritate the children.

In the story Saki makes the aunt seem extra boring by adding reactions from the children, without it you wouldn't know what the children thought about it, maybe you would think that they liked it.  In the book Saki provides different reactions from each child. For example the smallest of the small girls will always wonder off into her own wonder land and continuously repeating a line of a rime she liked, because it was the only one she remembered. Then Cyril the witty one that always asks smart questions to entertainer himself, its the only he can have fun! Cyril will ask one question such as : " why is the grass over there better?" that aunt can't answer and more questions keep coming. Then he produces the effect that the bachelor's story being the best ever. He does that by having the children ask questions still but having the bachelor give answers the children agree with. For example Cyril asked the bachelor : " why doesn't the prince have sheep in his garden?" the bachelor replies instantly with : " The prince's mother dreamed that the prince would be killed by a sheep or a clock. So he doesn't have clocks or sheep anywhere in the castle.". The children where impressed and so was the aunt, even though she tried not to show it. The satire is then produced because the aunt's "proper teachings" made things worse and the bachelor's "improper teachings" made things better. As the bachelor said at the end the aunt was an unhappy woman.