Thomas March is a scholar specializing in 20th-century British fiction. In the following essay, he examines Saki's use of irony.

Hugh Hector Munro, who wrote under the pseudonym Saki, is well known not only as a master of the short story form, but also for the irony with which his stories are imbued. "The Open Window," Saki's most frequently anthologized story, is an excellent example of Saki's use of irony. The events of the story itself are ironic in their own right. However, Saki increases the ironic amplitude of the story by making the reader a victim of the very same hoax that Vera perpetrates on Mr. Nuttel.

Crucial to the success of this effect is the story's narrative structure. Saki employs a frame narrative in "The Open Window "; that is, he provides not just one narrative, but a narrative within another, larger narrative that places the...