Irony In The Open Window

Framton
Nuttel is persuaded to come to the country because his sister and his doctors believe that
country life is restful. This is just an assumption based on the fact that the country
looks much more peaceful than the city. Butsems to be illustrating the fact
that people are pretty much the same everywhere. Nuttel probably expects to meet a family a
simple, kindly folks who are all blissfully relaxed themselves because of their long exposure to
the peaceful, restful country, where the biggest event of the week is strolling to church on
Sunday and strolling home again for an afternoon nap. Instead he runs into a whole bunch of zany
characters, including Mrs. Sappleton whom he believes to be totally insane. Anotherin Saki's
story is that the people Framton expects to be so wholesome and serene are nuttier than he is.
The monotony of country living has allowed them to blossom out in their unique eccentricities.
When he goes running off down the road, he may be thinking of running all the way back to
London, where people are crazy in more conventional and predictable ways. We don't see much of
the men, but they seem to like to do nothing but tramp around in the mud and kill birds. One of
them bursts out singing, "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?" because he knows Mrs.
Sappleton doesn't like it. Vera says her poor aunt is crazy and keeps waiting for the three men
to return for tea every night. In fact, that is exactly what Mrs. Sappleton does do: She leaves
the French window open because she is waiting for the men to come back for tea. She is crazy,
but not exactly in the way Vera describes her. Vera is hardly a simple country lass, like one of
those eulogized by Wordsworth. She is growing sadistic because of being confined to this lunatic
asylum. She probably wouldn't mind a bit if the three hunters really were drowned in a bog. In
fact she may have harbored that secret wish on more than one occasion.