Saturday, December 31, 2016

What is the main conflict in the short story "The Open Window" by Saki, and how is the main conflict resolved?

The main
conflict in "" byis the nebulous line between imagination and reality.


This blurring of the lines of reality and imagination generated by Vera, whose
"specialty" is "[R]omance at short notice," is the main conflict because it
is the one which produces the internal struggles of Framton Nuttel. Further, this conflict
effects Nuttel's discomfiture and fears, which, in turn, effect his final desperate act of
panic.

In this witty and mischievous story by Saki, it is a fragile Framton
Nuttel who arrives at the Sappleton home in the country for a "rural retreat" meant to
help heal his shattered nerves. Ironically, however, Nuttel has the misfortune of being
entertained by Mrs. Sappleton's niece. deceptively named Vera. For, it is her confluence of
truth with reality that lends a macabre conclusion to her tall-tale. And, this act of Vera of
blurring the line between imagination and reality causes the nervous Nuttel to break down as he
witnesses the real-life return of the Sappleton men through the window that Mrs. Sappleton has
purportedly left open in her delusion that the men engulfed years ago in a treacherous bog will
somehow return. 

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