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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sredni Vashtar, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Imagination vs. Reality
Religion
British Colonialism
Summary
Analysis
Conradin, a ten-year-old boy, is pronounced sickly by the local doctor, who says he won’t live another five years. Mrs. De Ropp, Conradin’s older cousin and guardian, endorses the doctor’s opinion. To Conradin, she represents “three-fifths of the world”: everything that is real and necessary but unpleasant. His imagination makes up the other two-fifths of the world. Conradin fears that one day he too will fall prey to the necessary and dull things that his cousin worries about. He believes that the only thing that has stopped him from becoming like his cousin so far is his own active imagination, which is spurred by his loneliness.
The beginning of the story sets up the central conflict: the clash between Conradin’s active imagination and Mrs. De Ropp’s dull practicality. The fact that Mrs. De Ropp represents “three-fifths of the world,” suggests a pessimistic outlook, where the majority of the world is dominated by such dullness. The “alliance” between the doctor and Mrs. De Ropp illustrates that Conradin is outnumbered. Perhaps this sense of being outnumbered contributes to Conradin’s feelings of loneliness, and the fact that these two authority figures agree that Conradin is going to die in five years implies that perhaps his coming death is actually a result of the way that they impose this dull practicality on him.
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Themes
Mrs. De Ropp, who would never admit to herself that she dislikes Conradin, nevertheless is willing to admit that it is not “particularly irksome” when she must force Conradin to do things he dislikes for his own good. Conradin hates her, but he is able to mask it. He takes pleasure in doing things that he knows would displease his guardian if she knew about them, and he likes the fact that she has no way to get into the realm of his imagination.
Mrs. De Ropp clearly dislikes Conradin, but the narrator phrases things humorously, which establishes a light air behind which Saki can aim his sarcasm at Mrs. De Ropp’s self-denial and the way she puts up an outward appearance to hie her inner cruelty. She only allows herself to torment Conradin if she can justify it by saying that she’s doing what’s best for him, even if that’s not actually the case. As the most “respectable” character in the story, Mrs. De Ropp often represents a type of old-fashioned British morality, and the fact that she is so deeply flawed is meant to poke fun at the hypocrisy and inherent cruelty of this type of morality. Conradin himself is less conflicted: he despises his cousin and has no problem admitting it to himself.
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Themes
Conradin spends his time in a dull garden overlooked by the windows of the house. Mrs. De Ropp is always nearby, ready to open a window to tell him what not to do. There are fruit trees in the garden, but he’s not allowed to pick the fruit from them, and they don’t produce much fruit anyway. Partially hidden behind some shrubbery, however, there is an out-of-use tool shed, which becomes a haven for Conradin—something like a playroom or a cathedral.
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Conradin uses his imagination to fill the toolshed with “phantoms,” some based on history and others that he invented on his own. Two real, living animals also inhabit the toolshed. One is a ragged-looking Houdan hen (a French breed of chicken with white or black-and-white feathers), which Conradin lavishes with affection. The other is a large polecat-ferret, which lives in a large hutch (or cage) and which was smuggled into the shed by a butcher boy in exchange for some silver that Conradin had hoarded over time.
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Themes
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Conradin is afraid of the sharp-fanged polecat-ferret, but it is also his most valued possession. The Woman (a nickname that Conradin uses for his guardian Mrs. De Ropp) doesn’t know that the animal is being kept in the toolshed, and Conradin tries to keep it that way. One day, Conradin comes up with a miraculous name for the creature: Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Mrs. De Ropp is religious and takes him to church once a week, but to Conradin traditional church services are an “alien rite” in contrast to the pagan-style religion that he has invented in the toolshed.
Every Thursday, Conradin worships Sredni Vashtar with an elaborate ceremony, involving red flowers when they are blooming and scarlet berries during the winter. Sredni Vashtar is a fierce, impatient god—which seems to Conrad to be the opposite of Mrs. De Ropp’s religion. On important “festival days,” Conradin steals nutmeg and spreads it in front of Sredni Vashtar’s hutch. These festivals are irregular and are used to celebrate events such as when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from a toothache for three days. Conradin almost convinces himself that Sredni Vashtar was responsible for the toothache.
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In Conradin’s imagination, the Houdan hen doesn’t join the cult of Sredni Vashtar. He decides she is an Anabaptist. Conradin has no idea what an Anabaptist is, but he hopes it’s not “respectable.” His cousin Mrs. De Ropp is very respectable, and that is why Conradin detests respectability.
Eventually, Mrs. De Ropp begins to notice that Conradin is spending time in the toolshed. She decides that it isn’t good for him to be spending so much time there, so at breakfast one morning, she announces that the Houdan hen was sold and taken away overnight. As she says this, she looks at Conradin, waiting for rage or sorrow, which she believes she can rebuke with her own excellent reasoning. But a pale Conradin says nothing.
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Themes
That afternoon, at tea, Mrs. De Ropp puts toast on the table (a delicacy she usually bans on the grounds that it’s bad for Conradin and that it causes trouble for her to make). But Conradin doesn’t touch the toast. Mrs. De Ropp says she thought he liked it, and Conradin just replies, “Sometimes.”
That evening in the shed, Conradin changes the way he worships the “hutch-god,” Sredni Vashtar. Instead of chanting praises, he asks for a favor. Conradin does not say aloud specifically what this favor is; he simply asks Sredni Vashtar to “do one thing for me,” believing that because Sredni Vashtar is a god, he will know what the thing is. Holding back tears in the shed, Conradin must eventually go back to the outside world, which he hates.
Every night in his dark bedroom and every evening in the toolshed, Conradin repeats the same prayer: “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.” Mrs. De Ropp notices that his visits to the tool shed haven’t stopped, even after the Houdan hen was sold. One day, she goes inside the shed to investigate and finds the locked hutch of Sredni Vashtar. She believes it contains guinea pigs and tells Conradin that she is going to get rid of them.
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Conradin tells Mrs. De Ropp nothing about what’s in the toolshed, so she searches his bedroom until she finds the key to the hutch that he had hidden. She goes right to the shed with the key. Since it is a cold afternoon, Conradin has to stay in the house while she goes to the shed. He can still watch her, however, if he stations himself at the furthest window of the dining room, where the door of the shed is visible just beyond the corner of the shrubbery.
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Conradin watches Mrs. De Ropp enter the shed. He imagines her opening the door of Sredni Vashtar’s hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw, where the ferret is hidden. He imagines her getting impatient and prodding at the straw. He repeats his prayer one last time, but even as he prays, he knows that he does not truly believe in the power of Sredni Vashtar.
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Conradin expects that Mrs. De Ropp will come out of the shed with a pursed smile on her face, and then an hour or two later, the gardener will carry Sredni Vashtar out of the hutch—no longer a god, just a simple brown ferret. Conradin believes his cousin will always triumph, just as she’s triumphing now, and that he will continue to grow weaker and sicker as a result of all her “pestering … and superior wisdom,” until one day there will be nothing left of him and the doctor who believed Conradin wouldn’t live another five years would be proved right.
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Feeling the sting of defeat, Conradin begins to chant a hymn for the endangered Sredni Vashtar. The chant is a battle song about how Sredni Vashtar goes forth, with bloody thoughts and bared teeth, as his enemies beg for peace but he brings them death. All of a sudden, however, Conradin stops his chanting and goes closer to the window pane. After several minutes, the door of the shed is still ajar. Conradin watches birds running and flying across the lawn, counting them again and again, while still keeping an eye on the open door as even more minutes pass.
A maid comes to lay the table for tea, but this doesn’t interrupt Conradin, who continues to wait and watch. He begins to feel hopeful, even triumphant—an unfamiliar feeling after all the time he has spent in patient defeat. Under his breath, he begins to repeat the battle chant.
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And then Conradin sees it: out of the open shed door walks Sredni Vashtar, with stains of blood around his throat and jaws.. Conradin’s ferret god walks down to a small brook at the lower part of the garden, takes a drink, and then crosses a plank bridge and disappears into the bushes.
The maid informs Conradin that tea is ready and asks where Mrs. De Ropp is. Conradin informs the maid that his cousin went down to the shed some time ago. While the maid goes down to fetch Mrs. De Ropp, Conradin begins to toast himself a piece of bread. He draws the process out, using a lot of butter and slowly enjoying eating the toast, all the while listening to the sounds of the house.
First Conradin hears noises, then silence, then the maid screams, and a chorus of others from the kitchen area answer her. Footsteps sound everywhere as they try to get outside help. Then, there is scared sobbing and shuffling as something heavy is brought into the house.
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