Analysis of “Reginald’s Choir Treat” by Saki

In the story, Reginald was a fictitious character created by Saki. Trying to look deeper, the name, Reginald, can actually mean ‘king’. In the first sentence, “ ‘Never,’ wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, ‘be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.’ ” this sentence actually means it is better to stay in middle and keep silent. Being Christians were banned in that era, they were being killed. This sentence in the story is very ironic. Reginald was a teenager who was very naughty, an unconventional person, liked to play jokes or tricks on people. But his family was very conventional. Like the story had mentioned that his family didn’t like Titian hair, because Titian was a shocking colour; they even used primroses as a table decoration, this symbolized they were very boring, they represented Middle Class, and stereotyped persons. Saki wrote and narrated the family: “His family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.” There was another irony about the following character, Amabel. The name Amabel can mean ‘I am beautiful’. Reginald’s family wanted him to be normal, therefore they found Amabel to talk with him, so that to let him be a good boy. Amabel was the vicar’s daughter, “was accounted” a beauty and intellectually gifted. The word “was accounted” is ironic, Saki wanted to tell that the people were conventional and stereotyped, they thought that Amabel was beautiful; In fact, she is not that pretty. In the story, it mentioned about Amabel never played tennis and she read Maeterlinck’s fiction, a boring fiction, but she was “reputed” that she had read it, actually she may not fully understood the deep meaning of the book. This was a kind of taboo, because in that society, people cannot talk about things like sex or other unconventional things. The people lived on a small country village, therefore their knowledge was very limited, and they speak one language, unlike America. People thought that