Saki’s writing style in “The Lumber Room” features exaggerated and formal language, which, when contrasted with the mundane, domestic content, contributes to the humorous tone of the story. Take the following passage, for example, in which the narrator explains the aunt’s cruel behavior:
It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would have been taken that very day.
While the narrator could have simply stated in a straight-forward tone, “The aunt punished the children by withholding pleasant activities,” the embellished, formal language here highlights the absurdity of the aunt’s punitive nature. By referring to children innocently misbehaving as “falling from grace,” “sinning collectively,” and demonstrating “depravity,” the narrator highlights the aunt’s moralistic intensity. Likewise, the strong descriptions of the aunt “rigorously debarring” the children from things like a circus “of unrivalled merit” demonstrate the absurd levels of cruelty the aunt brings to her treatment of the children.
Another element of Saki’s writing style is his decision to occasionally switch from Nicholas’s perspective to the aunt’s. When the aunt tells Nicholas that he can have strawberry jam for tea after he helps her out of the water tank, the narrator notes that the aunt “privately resolv[ed] that Nicholas should have none of it.” These small peeks into the mind of the antagonist aunt help readers understand just how cruel she is, thereby encouraging them to empathize with Nicholas’s mischievous actions (such as choosing not to help his aunt out of the water-tank).
