Deborah
ENGL 3850-02N
Supernatural Lit
Dr. Coats
3 March, 1998
Would You Like Some Sake, Saki?
Titles aside, Saki wrote nothing about sake, so the title has nothing to do with the reading response. I'm just a tad loopy today, so bear with me. Saki wrote clever little short stories with a vicious little twist at the end. A great many of them have death and or death-related carnage. I read most of them in this particular volume in one gulp. I've picked "Sredni Vashtar" and "The Unrest Cure" as the ones to do my reading response about.
"Sredni Vashtar" is a charming little fable about a boy and his avatar...no, that's not entirely correct. It's a story about a boy and his mother...no, that's later. Shoot. The parentless boy is being raised in typical British style: Do what the doctors say and don't care about what makes the child happy. Conradin is being raised by a female cousin. She is a stickler for rules and regulations. When she discovers that Conradin is keeping something in the shed, she pounces off to destroy it. However, Conradin's constant vigil to his avatar finally pays off. Srendi Vashtar vanquishes the loathed enemy and, having fulfilled his duty to his worshipper, melts away into the horizon. The wish fulfillment goes right along with any supernatural tale-- If one is good and faithful to one's god (whatever it might be), your unspoken desires come into being. Conradin didn't do anything to make the ferret hate his guardian, nor did he tell his guardian to go out to the shed. Things occurred of their own volition.
On the other hand, our hero, Clovis (remember him from "Tobermory"?) returns to wreak more havoc in "The Unrest-Cure." Upper-class men are beginning to complain to one another that their lives are in a bit of a rut, what? One can only spend one's money so many ways, what? So Clovis, clever Clovis, springs a bit 'av a joke on them. He preys on their fear of a loss of control to give them the shock that they need. He makes all sorts of claims about the situation, claims that can be very easily disproven with a calm head and a bit of patience, but the men don't settle down to think about it. After allowing them to increase the hysteria with their own imaginations, Clovis melts off into the horizon, leaving them in a state of Unrest.