Narrator's Persona

The narrator has a better understanding of the events that are hiding in the Evacuation Order No 19. When the narrator, Mrs. Hayashi, said she was packing up and ready to leave, we could see that something bad is going to happen in the near future. If the narrator is from Mrs. Hayashi’s boy or girl, then it would probably not know what had happened to the bird and the white dog the day before they were about to leave. If the narrator is another person, then we might think that the white dog just escaped. From the narrator’s point of view, we could see what happened to Junior. If the story was told from the children’s perspective, they probably wouldn’t be able to know why they are leaving because they didn’t see the sign that Mrs. Hayashi saw. We can also see the characteristics of Mrs. Hayashi from the way she tells the story. It was apparent that she didn’t want to kill the white dog, but she had no choice at all. After the white dog was killed, we could start to see why she was buying the bigger hammer and what she saw on the sign when she on her way home.

School and Community Characteristics

Some teachers are treating their students as friends. The teachers would teach the students during class and play chess or even computer games with them after school. When students have questions on the lecture, the teacher would treat students friendly. The only organization where the students govern the school is the student council. There are either one or two class representatives for each grade and there is a president that rules everyone in the student council. Even though the student council has power to govern the school and arrange the activities such as winter dance or sports day, they still have limited powers. They could not do whatever activities they pleased because they have to be careful on how much money they spent. For example, the president of our student council is deciding on if we should have a vending machine in our school or not. He has to think about the cost of the vending machine and the percentage of students that recycle their cans after drinking it before he really buys a vending machine. The economic characteristics in the school are kind of different form local students. The students in the school are mostly from wealthy families that doesn’t have financial problems.

Life-Changing Events

Events that are harsh and require hard working in history have forced people to change their lives completely. It could be their moral lesson that they will never forget in their live forever. These events are probably something that is hard to accomplish or greatly significant to them. When people have done something challenging, it can really have an enormous change in their lives. I have experienced an event that made a sudden and significant change in my life after I was sent to the hospital for the big cut I had by the wooden door. The second I went into the hotel, I got all excited and played with the wooden closet door because it was the first time I saw closet doors that slide. I got a big cut and my pinky was bleeding after being cut. Ever since that, I am no longer that playful and immature ever again. It suddenly wakes me up and tells me to be more responsible on things I do. I could still the scarf on my pinky today, and every time I see that scarf, I would remember the consequences I will have to face for making foolish actions. It was a memorable and significant experience that forced to change my life more or less.

Satire in "The Storyteller"

The story told by the bachelor was a satire to mock and make fun of the aunt’s story. The bachelor used the same story as the aunt, except that the setting and the details of the story was different. It used all the descriptive details that helped the children imagine what the story was like in their mind. Saki is trying to make fun of people who are too “realistic” and “proper”. The aunt felt that the bachelor’s story was not anywhere related to reality. A garden with pigs instead of flowers and other plots in the story expressed the aunt’s attitude towards story telling. Saki used the bachelor’s story to make his point by making the bachelor’s story similar to the aunt’s story, but making it more interesting and detailed, which made the children enjoyed the story. When the bachelor finished his story, the aunt said that his story was improper, making herself look even more stubborn and an uncreative person. This created the satire and the point Saki was trying to make: everything in the world is unfair where one may have its own wants when they weren’t really that hard working and another person may be doing things obediently and not get the things he or she deserved.

Motivation for Telling a Story

The aunt’s motivation was to make the children be quiet. The bachelor has the same motivation as the aunt. Beside from entertaining the children, the bachelor was also trying to make a satire to mock at the aunt for her terrible boring story. At the end, the aunt criticized the bachelor’s story for being “improper” because of the non-realistic events happening in his story. The aunt was just trying to make the children silent by telling the story with lack of details. She wanted the children to stop asking questions when they were looking outside the window. She was just trying to get over with it while the bachelor was into the story, making the children get a clear picture in their mind like a little movie running in their brains. The bachelor was trying telling the story with details in order to keep the children quiet. He also wanted the children to enjoy his story and I think that most story tellers might have the same motivation, which is to let readers enjoy the story you are telling. The aunt won’t be considering as a good story teller since her motivation wasn’t to let the readers enjoy her story.

Omniscient Point of View

We could tell how the aunt and the bachelor felt about each other’s story from the omniscient point of view. The choice of words from the story can greatly affect the plot by showing the story where the readers can read every character’s mind. It would be quite different if it were told by the bachelor or the aunt from a first person point of view. There would be thoughts and criticisms on the other person instead of an argument between the two if it was told from either the aunt or the bachelor’s perspective. For example, if the story was from a first person point of view, it would probably show how the bachelor felt about the aunt’s story and how he was going to tell the children his own creative story. If the story was told from the children’s point of view, they would tell the readers their thoughts on which story they prefer better, which was obviously the bachelor’s story. There would only be one side of the story if it is told from a first person point of view instead of understanding how each character felt towards the different “stories” presented in the story. Readers could tell easily what each character wants or believes from an omniscient point of view.

Satire

1. Repeats things every time.

2. Interrupts in class.

3. Fools around during class.

4. Keeps asking questions instead of asking the teacher instead.

5. Tries to imitate other and mock people when they are the one who really looks stupid.

6. Not washing hands after using the washroom

These are the five things that I hate the most about people. Most of the time, I would try to tell people to stop it instead making a satire out of it. I don’t think making a satire is a polite way to tell people not to do something annoying. Telling people that you don’t like their actions is always the best way to make someone stop doing that action most of the time, but this is not always the case. I do make satire out of people when people don’t listen to me and keeps doing things that will annoy me. Once, one of my classmates kept on asking me questions on the lecture because he doesn’t understand. I started to get annoyed and told him to stop, but he didn’t. So I decided to interrupt the teacher and asked the teacher every question he asked me and he felt embarrassed. I didn’t want to answer him the questions and miss what the teacher was teaching while I was explaining.

Goodness

I think that goodness is always rewarded. I think the bachelor’s story is the version of life. He tells the story with descriptive details and creative explanations for the children’s questions. The children believed in all the answers he answered when they were asking “why” questions. I remembered I met these kinds of storytellers before. They usually don’t tell the stories based on educational purposes, but for entertainment. Instead of making the story with a good moral lesson, the storytellers like the bachelor would make listeners focus on the story based on their imaginations and creativity. I was once told a story by one of my father’s friend. He used both narrative and descriptive details to back it up with his story. Without the details and feelings, the story would just be a story without any interest that grabs the listeners’ attention. It was all the narrative and descriptive details that made me went into the story and became one of the characters inside the story. The storyteller knew what kind of stories he should tell when I was boring that day and he used his different tone voice to make the story more interesting. He made me learn what a real good storyteller is like.

Saki's Purpose

The aunt’s story was not interesting and it could be seen easily by readers. Both the children and the bachelor were not pleased with the story even though the aunt didn’t agree with them. When the children were asking why the sheep were driven out of the field, the readers could see the children weren’t convinced with their aunt’s poor explanation. The children think the bachelor’s story was beautiful while on the other hand the aunt thought it was improper. The bachelor would have different incidents that explains the “why questions” differently. Unlike the aunt, the bachelor had fully convinced the children with his explanations that handled the children’s questions. Aunt only made up poor excuses that made the children unsatisfied. If we think back to the aunt’s earlier story about a good girl, we can compare it with the bachelor’s good girl story. The bachelor’s story has a more complex message and plot that explains every action and reason for a person’s action in descriptive details. It shows how story tellers can be good or bad by the way they tell stories. If the children say something, the aunt would be stubborn and say something that’s not creative while the bachelor would try to be humorous or imaginative.

Influence of Childhood

A writer’s childhood may influence greatly on his or her writing. A person’s personality or the way he or she act may reflect on his or her writing. I think my unique experience would be a good source of inspiration where I can tell my story as my moral of my story. For most of my stories, I would always include my first basketball game as an experience, especially childhood period. Writers from different childhood and background can influence greatly on their writing to express their feelings toward something or someone. If the writer’s from the city, they may feel proud of being born in a wealthy family while on the other hand a person from farming families might express poverty or slavery in their stories. I wouldn’t be surprise for readers to find out a person’s background from reading his or her stories because childhood can greatly influence people’s writing. If I was writing a story, I would always tell the story from my point of view in order to tell the readers how my childhood or experience had greatly influenced on both my writing and myself. Writing is just one way to express one’s self and show how they feel towards certain things.

Point of No Return

Most people are always emotional when they are in a situation they cannot change. I’ve been in this kind of situation before and I would be emotional and kept saying to myself that “I shouldn’t have done this!!!” I would always blame myself if anything like this happens. I would think about the mistake I made during the moment and not a solution to what I should do next. I haven’t met someone being calm before when they are in a situation where they cannot change. Most of them would get either crazy or cry. I really wish I can know someone who’s calm in this kind of situation so he or she could help me calm down. I can be really emotional if I cannot change the situation anymore. I would learn my lesson for that time and never make the same mistake ever again, but when something similar happens, I will always remember what I had happened before and still be crazy about it. Usually when situation like this happens, I would kept on asking my parents, especially my father, what I should do because he thinks of a solution or at least try to deal with it even if the situation cannot be change anymore.

My Favorite Stories

One of my favorite stories was the three on three basketball tournament story. It is a short novel for children. I try to put myself into the story and imagine myself playing the tournament. I could feel the passion and the heat in my body when I was standing on the basketball in front of two hundred students. This has been my dream since third grade: to become a basketball superstar in my school. Another story I like was Escape from Slavery. It gives me a picture of how African slaves were treated. It showed me a very different kind of life than I am living right now on the other side of the Earth. All they do was hard working after hard working. They were never educated, causing them to be illiterate when they became adults. I felt hard to imagine myself in a family that has different backgrounds and race with me. The hardest part to imagine was to work for these families without getting paid or benefits. I felt terrible for the writer and the slaves around him for doing such works and still get harsh punishments. The story made me sad and almost cry while I was reading it.