3 “The Storyteller” is a satire, or a story that makes fun of something to persuade people to change. The author is making fun of — A self-righteous people, like the aunt B irritating people, like the children. “The story started badly,” said the younger girl, “but it had a beautiful ending.” “It is the most beautiful story I have ever heard,” said the older little girl seriously. “It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,” said Cyril. The aunt disagreed. “That is an inappropri-ate story to tell young children!
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“The Storyteller”, or “Die Erzähler”, is an essay, written in 1936, by the German-Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin, consisting on one level of a discussion of the stories of the little-known Russian writer Nikolai Leskov, and on another of Benjamin’s views on the division between stories and storytelling, and novels and writing. It is included in the collection of essays entitled Illuminations, which I’ve been reading in the past weeks, but I had been meaning to have a look at this particular essay for much longer, since I had guessed already that its contents would appeal to me. Though Benjamin is a challenging thinker and I doubtless missed things here and there, still I want to share what I got out of the piece. Here is a summary of its main points.
The Death of Experience and the Death of Stories
Benjamin begins by making us consider what exactly astoryteller is. Though the name is surely familiar, they are almost entirelyconfined to the past. In the modern day, for various reasons, the craft – andit is a craft – of telling stories, is dying out. We may see the “great, simpleoutlines which define the storyteller”, but we cannot find them among ournumber anymore. The main reason for this is that experience, which is thesource of all stories, has fallen in value and is no longer used. As to why,Benjamin suggests three potential causes.
The first of them is that society is, in its industrialisedstate, changing so rapidly that experience from the past no longer can havemuch effect upon the present. He finds examples of this in the horrors of histime: one’s experience of the economy becomes useless against the unprecedentednature of hyperinflation. One’s knowledge of war and battle is deemed useless inthe face of new military technologies like the tank and mounted warfare. Arelated cause is the consequence of the first World War: “was it not noticeableat the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent – notricher, but poorer in communicable experience”. As a result of the truly awfulthings they have seen in the early 20th century – overexperience, ina word – people no longer wish to talk about what a hundred years before mighthave made a ballad or a thousand years before an epic poem.
The third and final cause Benjamin gives special mention to:the rise of “information”. Information, Benjamin writes, “lays claim to promptverifiability.” We have newspapers which will tell us not only what hashappened, but why it has happened, regardless of where in the world it tookplace. In the past, intelligence and experience that came from afar was valued,even if it could never be verified that a traveller spoke the truth. But now,through the ubiquity of the “why” in the form of news, we no longer care for theexperience of others. Information, however, “proves incompatible with thespirit of storytelling”, and since we are so surrounded by it, it can be hardto escape the idea that an informational understanding of the world is the onlyand best way to understand it. A further problem with information is the waythat it is intimately connected to its own time: “the value of information doesnot survive the moment in which it was new.” As time passes, news becomes outof date, explanations for events are improved, and the newspaper becomes goodfor nothing except scrap paper.
The Origin of the Storyteller
But Benjamin is not aiming to be depressing, at least notentirely. He sees a beauty in the story and he wants to share that with us,even as it breathes its last. Storytelling, as has become something of a commonplace,is something ancient, deeply rooted inside us. Benjamin concludes the essay bycalling the storyteller a craftsman – they take raw experience from themselvesand from others and make solid, useful, and unique works from it. And the beststorytellers, for him, are those whose work has the quality of being littledifferent from the speech of unnamed multitudes of storytellers. That is, thosewho seem to belong to a whole greater than themselves. He sees part of the successof the growth of the story in the structures of earlier societies. There weretwo people who gained a lot of experience: those who spent much time in thesame place, such as master craftsmen; and those who travelled a great deal andsaw much of the world, albeit in less detail, such as journeymen. For Benjamin,the cross-pollination of these two groups, such as in a blacksmith’s home, leadto the exceedingly fruitful combination of “deep” experience with “wide”experience. Storytellers, the essay notes, are often interested in practicalmatters, and Benjamin makes the point that the best of them are also “rooted inthe people”, with jobs that fully immerse them into life itself, such as beingsoldiers, sailors, or other manual workers.
Stories: Wisdom and Advice
But what exactly is a story? What are these mysterious things that the storytellers tell? Well, to begin with, every real story has “openly or covertly, something useful” hidden within it. “A moral… some practical advice… a proverb or a maxim”, whatever the case, the story has “Rat” within it – some advice, or counsel. This is not surprising – if the storyteller lives among the people and works among them too, then naturally what they want to do is help them using their experience. There is more to them than that, but Benjamin already hears criticism of this idea of stories. It’s awfully old fashioned to want a moral, to want some kind of advice, out of the things we hear or read. But Benjamin doesn’t see the problem in the stories themselves, but rather in a society which, due to its ever-growing specialisation, has meant that “the communicability of experience is decreasing.” What an accountant might be able to say usefully to a cleaner at a hotel nowadays is far less than, two hundred years ago, two similar such people might be able to share with each other. Barriers have arisen between us. This has the knock-on effect of disarming wisdom too, which is “Rat” “woven into the fabric of real life”. What use could be the use of the wisdom of a banker, unless we want to be a banker? Consciously, or unconsciously, we devalue the wisdom of others more and more and instead rely upon that upstart known as information. Another reason for wisdom’s death is that instead of using experience for finding our “truth”, we also increasingly use bigger narratives, such as ideologies, cutting out the human element entirely.
Stories: Novels and Isolation
Nowadays we still come across what can be called “a story”within novels and other works of written art, but we no longer see “stories”.The novel rose in prominence as the story declined. Benjamin sees novels ascompletely separate from stories because it is completely “dependent on thebook”. “It neither comes from the oral tradition nor goes into it.” Think aboutthe last serious novel you read, and then think about the times you spoke aboutit with others. Rarely does the story itself assume prominence in these kindsof discussions anymore. Literary criticism is partially to blame for this, butwhatever the reason, the plot takes a back seat to forces like form, style, andgenre. Novels have their value, of course, in Benjamin’s eyes, but that valueis one disconnected from the value of stories. Novels for him show theconfusion of life, but they do not and cannot be vehicles for the disseminationof wisdom – the instant they do there are cries of “moralising”, “preachy”, andall sorts of other insults.
Another difference between the novelist and their work andthe storyteller and their own is to do with their relationship to their readersand listeners. Born out of social interactions and experience, a storyteller isa social animal, and so is their work. I tell you a story, and you are indialogue with me, able to ask questions, and challenge things. More importantlystill, my stories are a mixture of my own experiences and those of others, andwhen I tell you my story, you have a new story for yourself – storytellinginvolves connection and giving. Even if written down a story still creates acopy of itself in your head in a way that a novel, for Benjamin, does not. Bycontrast, the novelist is isolated, creating alone, for a reader who may noteven exist. He is “no longer able to express himself by giving examples of hismost important concerns, is himself uncounselled, and cannot counsel others”.He doesn’t have any advice to give because his experiences cannot createstories. There is a sense of great loneliness implied here. Benjamin has inmind here, I think, those truly huge and serious novels, works like Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov, which deal with such great philosophicaland theological concerns, but are all ultimately the product of too muchthinking, rather than too much experience. A story about the same topics offaith and God, one imagines, would be simply tell of a man or woman pacing upand down in a wood-panelled room and raging against their mind and the world itcontains. Not exactly a good story, in short. The practical nature of thestoryteller’s life means that their stories are also practical in theme andadvice.
A good and simple way of comparing the division betweenstories and novels is this: consider the contrast between our two phrases “themoral of the story” and “the meaning of life.” A story has its moral and answer,whereas a novel merely searches for an answer to that undoubtedly greater butcertainly also more abstract question of “what is it we must do?”.
Image Of The Storyteller Short Story
Stories: Ambiguity
Benjamin relates a story told by Herodotus. King Psammenitusof Egypt, defeated in battle and enslaved, sees his son go by to be executedwithout any outward show of emotion. Next he sees his daughter go by as a maid.But when finally he sees one of his old servants go by as a prisoner he startscrying and falls into the deepest mourning. Herodotus does not explain why. Thestory illustrates the next key idea of stories – their ambiguity. When I readBenjamin’s description of the incident, I thought initially that the king wascrying because he suddenly realised that all previous social ranks had beenabolished, and he was no different to one of his servants in status. Yetanother, equally valid suggestion that Benjamin puts forward is that the kingwas restraining his grief, and seeing the old servant is the feather thatfinally made the dam of his sorrows burst. We have no way of knowing who of usis right, or whether the explanation is yet another one.
Stories are marked by their ambiguity. Unlike the novel,coming from an age of information, which tries to explain everything throughpsychological detail, stories do not try to explain things. “The mostextraordinary things, marvellous things, are related with the greatest accuracy”,but there are no attempts to offer up a “why” for them. Our own imaginationsare left with that task. Information demands an attempt to offer a why, whichalso means it is bound to what is scientific, verifiable. On the other hand, storiescan use any manner of fantastic ideas or miracles, because they are not definedby the pursuit of a “why” or a scientific idea of “truth”. You can tell a storyagain and again, and each time, depending on one’s mood, one’s station in life,one’s age, you will get a different reaction to it. But information is alwaysthe same – the work of imagining is impotent before facts and theirexplanations. Stories “resemble the seeds of grain which have lain forcenturies in the chambers of the pyramids shut up air-tight and have retainedtheir germinative power to this day”: each time they are told, they create anew version of themselves, a new experience, within us. Whereas a novel isdoomed to being dated – its psychological framework always bears the brand ofits own age.
Stories: Memory, Boredom, and Endings
Stories are told for plenty of reasons. Ambiguity is one ofthem, because it means a retelling is never in vain. They are also told becauseof boredom. Benjamin writes that “boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation.Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience”. Through boredomwe are receptive to stories, but not only in the sense that we are willing tolisten to them – we are also willing to remember them. For remembering, andthen retelling, stories is key to the art of storytelling, “and this art islost when the stories are no longer retained”. Unfortunately, Benjamin sees ourage as one without the sort of boredom we need for stories. There are many ofus who get bored – children especially complain of it. But nowadays we hardlyever live in such a state for long. Phones, games, and videos all provide arapid escape from that tiresome emotion. But they also provide an escape fromthe possibility of telling stories, of passing the time through conversationand company. Given this environment of boredom, Benjamin adds that stories endwith the sense that they can always be picked up and carried on. Novels,however, end without the same kind of feeling that they can just be continued.A novel, once it has ended upon a sufficiently good revelation about themeaning of life, stops and digs its heels in. Again, this is also a formalthing – a speaker can carry on, but a novel always arrives as a finishedarticle.
Stories: the “transparent layers”
Benjamin is critical of the short story too, which is due to its intimate connection to the novel, but the shorter work has the added problem of struggling to deal with the larger thematic concerns that novels excel at. So, it occupies an awkward artistic position of failing to be either story or novel and thus flounders. In the case of a story, the “how” of its creation is important. Each storyteller will give their account of how they heard the tale, and in this way “traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel”. Short stories, though they can approximate this with certain frame narrative structures, nonetheless prove themselves storytelling “abbreviated”. They have lost their connection to the oral tradition, and also no longer permit “that slow piling one on top of the other of thin, transparent layers which constitutes the most appropriate picture of the way in which the perfect narrative is revealed through the layers of a variety of retellings”. By cutting out the middleman – the storyteller – a short story also cuts out the power and mystery that a history of retellings brings to a story. By doing so they also lose the “chain of tradition”, that a real story has. A short story, no matter how good, no longer reaffirms our connection to our roots.
Leskov and the Rest
So, where does Nikolai Leskov fit in to all this? TheRussian is a modern-day storyteller for Benjamin, though his dates (1831-1895)mean he had been long dead even by the time that our author put pen to paper. Leskovwas a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, and throughout his life had workedvarious odd jobs around the country, most successfully for an English firmwhich paid him to travel all around Russia on behalf of its leaders. Because ofthis, Leskov had the wealth of experience needed to give his work a story-likequality. He wrote novels, but more often shorter stories and novellas, all ofthem incorporating the ideas of story-ness that Benjamin highlights above. Hismost famous story, at least in the English-speaking world, is “Lady Macbeth of theMtsensk District”, and Benjamin also singles out stories such as “TheDeception” and “The White Eagle”. Leskov is not the only storyteller whoBenjamin names, though he is the focus. Among the others are Kipling, Poe, and JohannPeter Hebel. I might add Joseph Conrad, whose tales of the sea often alsodisplay the characteristics of stories.
Conclusion: Against the System
The Storyteller Short Story Saki Book Review
Even today, Benjamin writes, do people still pay attention to the words of a dying man or woman. In dying we have the same power, place the same demands of silence and thought and memory, as did the storyteller long ago. The story is not dead, but from my own experience it is certainly dying out in our time. I remember rare evenings, long ago, walking back from a long run with friends in the dark and fog of a November night, trying desperately to find some kind of ghost story worth telling, and being unable to. Only one us knew one, which they heard one from someone else. But that story remains with me, buried in my memory, unlike so many carcasses of novels and short stories. We oughtn’t let stories disappear from our lives without a fight. For stories, as Benjamin hints at, allow us to escape the systems that dominate our lives, most notably capitalism itself. They allow us into a carefree existence of laziness, boredom, and relaxation, safe from deadlines and reckoning up of bank accounts. They also, unlike novels, draw us closer to other people. Novels, formed by the bourgeois and capitalist system of their origin, can never truly escape it. Telling stories, meanwhile, is a permanent act of rebellion, an assertion of our freedom and the value of our experience against a world that tries to tell us we are nothing unless we add to information. Stories are the deepest, and greatest, treasure we have.
The Storyteller Short Story Pdf
If all this has inspired you to take a look at Leskov for yourself, my translation of “A Righteous Man” is located here.
The Storyteller Short Story
Alternatively, for another recent writer who has carried on the tradition of ambiguous storytelling, my translation of Franz Kafka’s story “Before the Law”, can be found here.
- 1
How do the morals of the bachelor’s tale and the aunt’s story connect to the works of some of the most respected and renowned philosophers through the ages, like St. Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche?
The difference is nothing less than a philosophical divergence on the issue of morality. In its own modest way, “The Storyteller” is a meditation upon much more immodest conceptions of the nature of ethical behavior upon which entire volumes have been written by such distinguished figures from the world of philosophy as St. Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche. The moral of the story told by the aunt is that good acts shall always be rewarded in the end. By contrast, the bachelor’s story strongly suggests that even those endowed with the highest ethical character are every bit as much at risk for coming to a bad end as the worst kind of amoral scoundrel.
- 2
The bachelor’s offer to take over the storytelling duties from the children’s aunt seems to be based on an intention to keep the children from becoming unruly, but what might be another less charitable intent?
While the darker aspect and more realistic insight into the nature of morality in his story is clearly chosen as a way to capture and maintain the attention of the bored children, those very same elements seem to have been chosen specifically as a means of goading the aunt. The fact that the bachelor’s story essentially upends the entire philosophical view toward morality and ethical behavior which the aunt struggles vainly to get across in her story can be viewed less as a genuine insight into the bachelor’s perspective on the same issue and more as insight into the nature of his character. He may simply find the aunt’s insistent moral-mongering so distasteful that he decides to relate a story that tears it to pieces solely for the mischief of dragging her lofty ideals back down to earth in full view of the children.
- 3
Identify the conflict in this story and justify an opinion on the ultimate victor in this conflict.
The conflict that provides the dramatic tension in “The Storyteller” is clearly between the aunt and the bachelor, or more precisely, between the aunt’s rather obvious view that stories told to children require a definite moral and the bachelor’s apparent view that the entertainment value of stories trumps any lesson they might teach. “The Storyteller” thus becomes an example of how dramatic tension created by the conflict between two people can end with one side irrefutably vanquished yet with no physical harm done. The bachelor is the winner in this conflict of opposing ideologies on the most reasonable basis for judgment: the children are enraptured by his story after being left restless and bored by the story told by their aunt.
- 4
How is the ending of the bachelor’s story an example of irony?
The story-within-the-story of Bertha and her medals is an excellent example of irony. The entire point that the bachelor is trying to make with his story is that the aunt’s insistence that good deeds will always result in reward is misguided. Bertha becomes the very iconic symbol of a good person: she actually receives a number of medals honoring this very facet of her personality. In any story told by the aunt, Bertha would come to a rewarding end by virtue of her demonstrable moral superiority. Therefore, the ending actually possesses two levels of irony. There is the irony of Bertha as a model of the aunt’s moral view coming to a horrific end regardless and there is the irony that Bertha’s horrific end comes about directly as a result of being awarded medals for her high standards of goodness.
- 5
How does Saki create symbolism through colors in 'The Storyteller'?
In 'The Storyteller,' Saki uses colors to create themes and further draw out the symbolism of animals in the bachelor's story. When the bachelor describes the park, he pays special attention to the beautiful, colorful animals, writing, 'There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment's notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day' (6). In contrast, other animals in the park - the pigs and wold - have dark, less pleasant colors: black, white, and gray. These animals represent the darkness of reality, in contrast to the paradisical atmosphere of the park created mostly by the description of colors. The dark colors of the wolf also contrast with the white of Bertha's dress, representing her innocence and purity. Thus, Saki shows innocence being destroyed not only by having an animal devour a proper female child, but also by symbolically showing the color black dominate the color white.
- 6
How did H. H. Munro's early life influence his writing in terms of content and style?
H. H. Munro was born in Burma when it was under the British Raj. However, when his mother died in a tragic, sudden event, he was sent to live in England with his siblings and his aunt. He found the English education system oppressive and highly disliked the way his aunt behaved toward him and his sisters, especially with regard to desired behaviors and discipline.
The author's antipathy toward English education and parenting is clear in the short story 'The Storyteller' where a bright, aloof man (who can be seen as a representation the author) questions the authority of an aunt attempting to control three children. Indeed, many of the major themes of the story have to do with childhood, education, and the moral values instilled (or not) in children such as curiosity and imagination. Thus, one can gather that his upbringing had a large influence on the content of his stories.
Furthermore, Munro's alienation and dissatisfaction in his childhood likely influenced his witty and satirical style, which has garnered him international and enduring fame.
- 7
In what ways do the two main stories in 'The Storyteller' (the frame story of the people on the train and the bachelor's story) parallel one another?
Parallels can easily be drawn between the characters in the train car and those in the bachelor's story. In the train car, the bachelor takes over the responsibility of storytelling from the aunt and tells the children a story which excites them but instills values that are against those of their aunt and perhaps their society as a whole. Within the bachelor's story, Bertha is a good little girl who was found and eventually eaten by a wolf, questioning the point of all her moral learning. Furthermore, her innocence and purity are symbolically destroyed by the dark wolf ripping up and leaving behind her white dress. The wolf can be seen to parallel the bachelor, and Bertha the children, which calls into question the bachelor's callous behavior. Through this parallel, Saki shows that he questions not only the aunt's methods of raising children, but also the bachelor's responsibility and involvement with them.