Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Sredni Vashtar by Saki. Sredni Vashtar by Saki. It has been adapted for opera, film, radio and television. The story concerns an unhealthy ten-year-old boy named Conradin, who lives with his strict cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp. Conradin rebels against her and inven "Sredni Vashtar" is a short story written by Saki Hector Hugh Munro between and and initially published in his book The Chronicles of Clovis.
Conradin rebels against her and invents a new religion for himself, which centres on idolising a polecat-ferret he calls Sredni Vashtar; he imagines Sredni Vashtar to be a vengeful, merciless god. Conradin keeps the ferret hidden in a cage in the garden shed, and worships the idol in secret. The story comes to a climax when his cousin sets out to discover his god. Get A Copy. Published first published More Details Original Title.
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Oct 12, Gaurav rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. Sredni Vashtar went forth, His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white. His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death. Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful. It was Friday night, I happened to be in an upcountry location. Feeling tired from the exhaustive mundane day-to-day official sequence of events which are ironically necessary evils for your existence , I wanted to read something short.
And searching through the web of internet after following the pleasant distraction of news abo Sredni Vashtar went forth, His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white. And searching through the web of internet after following the pleasant distraction of news about Nobel Prize winners I chanced upon Sredni Vashtar by Saaki, the little beauty which immediately got hold of me.
Here you enter the eerie and disturbing but convincing world of Conradin, sickly ten-year old boy who was pronounced to meet the eventual fate of his life by the doctor; however, the boy has his inventive imagination, wrapped in the cloud of solitude, at his disposal as a symbol of hope to not to be succumbed to this cruel world. Her strict guardian, Mrs. De Ropp, pounces upon any possability arises out of probabilistic thread of the universe to rips away Conradin from any sort of comfort fruits of his perceptive imagination might provide, as we see that an undiagnosed condition seems more of an excuse for coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness than any actual illness and throw Conradin into the deep and dark well of nothingness built upon inherent meaninglessness of life.
A normal child would have certainly surrendered to the demands of dull and cheerless but brutish abode controlled by unsympathetic cousin, but Conradin is no usual child as he contrives pleasures for himself, gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.
Conradin hated her with sincere antipathy, though the feeling is mutual among them, but he has been able to mask it perfectly under his tempting labyrinth of fancy.
In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral.
He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver.
The dreadfulness of the beast harbors trepidation in him however, the beast proves to be his most sought after possession, one which gradually defines his life. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion.
A seemingly simple tale of cat-mouse game in which both opponents use their might to outsmart each other, only to realize eventually that they are in a deadly everlasting soup which would suck life out of both , in which Conradin and his cousin rear up their mutual aversion masked under the sheath of estranged association, to find solace in their mutually exclusive universes perhaps existing in the same space but in different dimensions, is in effect an astute study of faith and its impact over humanity.
Recognizing that symbols or references we have carved out during the course of our existence essentially bestow psychological assurance that someone is there we may look up to and Conradin too spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion which is contrasting to the religion of Mrs.
The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Reading Saaki for the very first time, I find that his prose has a tinge of poetic beauty under the veneer of which actually lies profound absurdity conveyed through beautifully and carefully chosen like the precision of a surgeon adjectives which only enhances the effect of the narrative bequeathing the underlying irony.
It is like a beautiful morning in which the tinge of red spreads across the landscape spreading pleasant panorama which soothes eyes and send pacifying ripples across the brain but at the heart of your consciousness you know that your star is burning and dying out every second, ironic beauty as we may call it. You may sense that the author has unparallel control of his prose as if he is guiding you through an unknown abyss of human consciousness holding a torch traversing through dark and menacing paths.
It is like a literary pilgrimage wherein you worship the literature which oozes elixir of serenity and contentment for those who hold upon it. I highly recommend the short story to everyone as it sits shimmering through five ominous stars. Highly recommended, for everyone. View all 20 comments. Oct 11, Cecily rated it it was amazing Shelves: humour , food , family-parenting , short-stories-and-novellas.
I'll have them all cleared away. Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself.
He saw the Woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience.
And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right.
And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:. And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door.
A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the pan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat.
But Conradin seems almost psychopathic in his calmness after the event: his cousin has just been brutally killed by his pet ferret, and yet he seems entirely unmoved as he makes his toast. She was pregnant at the time, and the shock caused her to miscarry; she died soon after. The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar.
Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge of what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. Photo from The War Illustrated 31 July Via Wikimedia Commons. Sredni Vashtar and The Lord of the Flies are tales which honestly talk about the darkness in children. The Lord of the Flies was motivated as a counterpoint to another work.
What inspired Sredni Vashtar? It seems that Sredni Vashtar , like many of Saki's stories pitting children against adults, was inspired from his childhood. Saki had lost his parents at an early age, and was fostered by tyrannical aunts. Munro by Brian Gibson:. Munro's true mother was run over by a cow and Ethel notes that Aunt Augusta was afraid of the creatures, [ Ethel Munro herself notes that Aunt Augusta and Aunt Tom were "guilty of mental cruelty; we often longed for revenge".
Saki's stories, perhaps reflecting Munro's absence of or yearning for his mother, do not show the defeat of a mother as often as they revel in the defeat of aunts or other female guardian figures by fate, animals and children.
De Ropp after she kills Conradin's pet Houdan hen, echoing Munro's childhood loss of a favourite Houdan cock. This sense of surveillance, of being trapped by a guardian's watchful eye, more in keeping with Victorian than Edwardian settings for child-centered fiction, suggests these tales tap into the adult Munro's remembrance of his s childhood.
Firstly thanks for a question about Saki, one of my favourite authors sadly forgotten between Wilde and Wodehouse. I think this is a matter of interpretation; I have read all of Saki's short stories multiple times, and I don't find Sredni Vashtar to be one of the darkest, or even dark at all.
I think it's just a combination of two things:. Many of Saki's stories have a humorous opposition between a child or young person and an aunt or similar guardian. Seen in Wilde and Wodehouse too. The most satisfying example is in The Lumber Room , where Nicholas outwits his cousins' aunt inimitably described by Saki as "the aunt-by-assertion" and "the soi-disant aunt".
But of course similar examples are scattered throughout the stories. And minor examples abound, such as the death at the end of Tobermory. So, if you don't take the death of Conradin's guardian seriously, Sredni Vashtar is a typical Saki story: there's an imaginative boy or sometimes it's a girl, as in the stories featuring Vera, most famously The Open Window ; he's clever but the adults are rigid and oppressive; he has a world of his own greatly amplified by his imagination in which the adults have no admittance and would not understand anyway; and just once, he gets his satisfaction.
What's not to like?
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