Russian Folktales · Chapter
A Cure for Story-Telling explained
A porter, whose wife is obsessed with listening to stories, devises a plan to cure her habit.
What happens
A porter, whose wife is obsessed with listening to stories, devises a plan to cure her habit. He invites a freezing old man who claims he can tell stories all night, on the condition that the wife makes no interruptions. The man repeatedly recites the same sentence about an owl sipping water until the wife finally protests. The porter then beats her, and she becomes so traumatized that she despises stories from then on.
Themes in this chapter
Trickery and Cunning
The porter cunningly uses a repetitive story to provoke his wife into breaking her promise, then punishes her to cure her habit.
Characters to notice
- The Master
The porter who schemes to cure his wife's love of stories by inviting a storyteller and then beating her when she interrupts.
- The Old Man
A freezing peasant who agrees to tell stories all night but only repeats a single phrase, provoking the wife's interruption.
- The Old Woman
The wife who is passionately fond of stories and is eventually beaten and cured of her habit.
Key passages
“There was an owl flying across a garden, and it sat over a well and sipped the water.”
An owl flew over a garden, perched by a well, and drank from it.
The repetitive phrase used by the storyteller to bore and provoke the wife.