The Storyteller, a classic work of H.H.Munro - known as Saki, talks about a bachelor who tells a story to two young girls who are his travel companions on a train.
Explanation:
This is a story that is straight-forward and direct. It starts to the point where the two young girls are listening to the story being narrated by their aunt. At the end of the story they both express that they have not liked it at all and that it is unreal because of its extreme morale.
The bachelor keeps observing the entire scene and listens to the story. He understands that the young girls want to listen to something realistic, practical and believable. He tells them a story titled as 'horribly good' about a girl who dies because of her goodwill/good deed medals making a noise while she tries to hide from view of a wild animal.
The girls absolutely love the story and exclaim how relating and realistic it is.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY and THE MESSAGE SAKI WANTS TO GIVE to his readers is exactly the same. He wants to tell his readers that righteousness is a trait that all of us must practice but it does not lead us to good ends. It can lead us to bad too. It is not true that good people will end up only in the good experiences. They suffer equally.
This is central message of the story.
Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was an American poet and anti-war activist. <span>She felt it was part of her calling to point out the injustice of the </span>Vietnam War<span>, and she read some of her poems at the protest rallies in which she took part. The two poems mentioned here touch on the circumstances of the war in South East Asia that the USA was involved in at the time</span>. In "Overhead in Southeast Asia" she wrote:
<span>"White phosphorus, white phosphorus, mechanical snow, where are you falling?" "I am falling impartially on roads and roofs, on bamboo thickets, on people."
This was a powerful indictment on the atrocities of chemical warfare. In the other poem, "Life at War" she described the human tragedy in a similar way.
"The disasters numb within us, caught in the chest, rolling in the brain like pebbles. the feeling resembles lumps of raw dough..."
Levertov spread her anti-war message through her literary work. After reading her poems we cannot escape her powerful message that the conflict was both horrific and futile.
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