Marc Daryl Valerio y Ramos III - Diligence

(ELEMENTS OF A SHORT STORY)

CHARACTERS: --Main Character: Frampton Nuttell - He suffers from nervous problems, and loves talking about his illnesses. He is also very timid, and easily deceived as we see from how readily he believes Vera's story. Vera - She is clever, quick-witted, very inventive and has a cruel, ironical sense of humour. She enjoys terrifying Frampton (whose doctors have warned him not to get into frightening situations.) She is also a good actress - she manages to make Frampton believe that she is also terrified of the "ghosts", for instance. --Other Characters: Mrs. Sappleton - kind, polite but quite absorbed in her own concerns. She isn't very interested in her visitor, but tries to be kind to him. We can guess that she is also fooled by Vera. Mrs. S's husband, and Frampton's sister, don't really appear enough in the story for their characters to be established.

SETTING: When: (TIME)

Unmentioned. Where: (PLACE) The story is set in the English country house of Mrs. Sappleton. The home has a huge window which allows Vera to make up the fanciful tale of how Mr. Sappleton and his hunting party left one...

CONFLICT: SITUATION: The conflict of the story is both internal and external. Nuttel has been set to the country in order to settle his nerves. Internally, he is unstable. When Vera discovers this, she begins to...

TYPE: The conflict of this story is man .vs. man. Vera deliberately exploits Nuttel's nervousness for her own pleasure. The secondary conflict could be man vs. self (Nuttel's nervousness fuels Vera's storytelling). Trying to decide the conflict is easy if you look at character motivation... what does the character want or need, how does he go about getting it, and who/what stands in the way.

PLOT: SUMMARY: At the beginning of this story, Frampton Nuttal, a man who is in the countryside as a rest cure for his nerves, is sitting talking to Vera, a 15 year old girl. Vera is a niece of Mrs Sappleton, a woman to whom Frampton has been given a letter of introduction by his sister.While they are waiting for Mrs Sappleton to come downstairs, Vera tells Frampton that her aunt's husband and two young brothers were drowned in the marshes while out shooting several years ago. The tragedy sent the aunt out of her mind, and she always keeps the French window (glass door) into the garden open, believing that they will come back. Mrs Sappleton then arrives, apologising for the open window and explaining that she is expecting her husband and brothers any moment. Frampton plays along with her, until he is horrified by seeing three figures, and a dog, coming out of the dusk towards the house. He runs away in panic; the husband and brothers arrive, very puzzled by the guest's strange behaviour. Vera calmly tells them that it must have been the dog; he told her he was terrified of dogs after being attacked by wild dogs in India.

STRUCTURE: Man vs. society... The structure of the story is actually that of a story-within-a-story. The larger "frame" narrative is that of Mr. Nuttel's arrival at Mrs. Sappleton's house. Within this narrative frame is the second story, told by Mrs. Sappleton's niece.

SYMBOL:

FRAMPTON NUTTEL (himself) & THE OPEN WINDOW of course...

Framton Nuttel himself can be considered a symbol. There is obviously something wrong with him (either he's stressed or has some sort of mental imbalance) and the way he acts at the end... In the story, the open window is symbolic, it is at the heart of the tall tale that Vera tells Framton Nuttel. She leads him to believe that the open window is a memorial, left open to honor...

POINT OF VIEW: The story is narrated using the "THIRD PERSON POINT OF VIEW". It is narrated by the narrator which is not a character in the story. On the other hand, the type was "OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW or GODLIKE POINT OF VIEW". Hence, the narrator gives a synoptic description of the main character as the story expands. The narrator also knew the cognitions of the main character at all.

ATMOSPHERE: * Physical Setting: This story interprets a good atmosphere. The setting of the story "The Open Window" by H.H. Munro (Saki), is the Stappleton house: A house in the country, we can assume it to be a country estate, often owned by the Victorian, which was literally historical at all.