Saki’s writing style in “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger” features the frequent use of exaggeration and irony. Saki intentionally uses highly descriptive, embellished language to capture the shallow thoughts and absurd actions of his characters, adding to the humorous tone of the story, as seen in the following passage:
Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. Her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Her speculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself.
Rather than simply stating, “Louisa Mebbin was frugal,” Saki waxes poetic about how she “adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money” and how “francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands.” The flowery nature of Saki's prose is meant to make readers laugh as they realize that Louisa Mebbin is not actually “a protective elder-sister” or someone who holds money with “sympathetic hands,” but is, in fact, a common penny-pincher. The way Saki uses exaggerated language here implies that Louisa may see herself this way but that readers should not.
