Summary Of Dusk By Saki

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Saki ( H.H. Munro) was a well-known short story writer in the English cannon. Saki is still recognized for one of his famous works ‘’Dusk.’’ The author introduces the readers to three young men each man has a duty and a role in the story. Norman Gortsby appears first and ushers in the personalities of the other two characters ironically, one is old and one is young. The plot is quite confusing, but it plays perfectly into the theme of the short story. To me, Saki writings are confusing because he brings his readers by giving them a setting, tone, and a little bit of background knowledge. In doing this it sets a visual picture in the reader 's head before he gets into Dusk. Then as the story set in with the young man telling his story, …show more content…

So as I continue to analyze Dusk also breaking down literary criticism on Saki, It is in my opinion that the young man featured is indeed lying. The story sets up at park with just Norman and the old man on the park bench right before dusk which Saki refers to as the ‘’Hour of the defeated.’’ Saki states in the story that dusk tends to bring people outside their misfortunes and sad moods without being notice to outsiders and more successful people. Giving the mood of the story a feeling of guilt and gloom helps sets up the young man story to Norman. It is hard to convince Norman to help him because he knows what type of people the dusk brings. The young man pleads his story to Norman, as a reader you feel sorry for the young man because of the mood set by Saki leading up to this point. In researching Saki, I discovered that a few of his other short stories follow this same pattern. The young man story is hard to believe because it 's an unlikely and unusual set of events. Later on in his story, he brings up a bar of …show more content…

The young man doesn’t have the soap to prove to Norman that his story is legitimate and forces Norman and the readers to believe that the young man was just tryna swindle Norman out of his money. Researching Saki and some of his work I came across an interesting fact about some of Saki’s stories. Saki had roughly 135 stories he wrote and a majority of them have trap endings. In Dusk after the young man walks off, Norman finds a bar of soap which instantly makes Norman feel guilty because he stereotypes the young man as a con artist and gives the young man some money and walks back to the bench. Here 's where the old man comes into play, his role in the story makes the reader rethink the whole story the plot twist that gives the story a cliff hanger ending feeling. Norman went back to the bench and runs across the old man searching for something. Norman asks the old man what he’s in search for and he says a bar of soap. This ending twist of the story makes the story confusing because there 's no way to know who the soap belongs to. It sets up many different theories of whether the young man made the story up when he saw the soap on the ground or did he use the old man story and was missing

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