Q: (b) Comment closely on Saki’s presentation of Van Cheele and the boy in the

following passage from Gabriel-Ernest.

ANS: Gabriel Earnest is a short story by Hugh Munro. In the passage, a country
gentleman named Van Cheele finds a wild adolescent boy living on his woodland
property. The boy claims to hunt at night and feed on birds, small animals, and even
children. Van Cheele orders the apparent poacher out of his woods, and remarks on his
strange and “positively uncanny” behavior. In fact, much of Saki’s fiction reads like a
direct challenge to the Victorian notion that children are paragons of innocence.
‘Gabriel-Ernest’ is worthy of closer analysis because it explores a similar idea, but using
Gothic horror fiction as its vehicle. But this masterfully written story is peppered with
Saka’s signature wit, humor and turn of phrase. On the face of it, the story appears to
deal with the encounter of a character called Van Cheele with a wolf-boy. However, on
a deeper analysis, Gabriel- Ernest explores the complex themes of identity, paranoia,
ambiguity and acceptance.

The setting of the passage is pastoral. There are woods in the surrounding area and
Saki mentions hunting considerably. The narrative is in third person: omniscient
narrator. Therefore, the reader gets an unbiased depiction of the situation and the
weaknesses and strengths of the main characters are presented objectively.

The boy whom Van encounters is a truly mysterious character. We do not have a
backstory about who he is, not do we know what ultimately happens to him. This
mystery has been sustained by the author’s writing style as well. One notices that there
is a huge difference between Saki’s description of Van Cheele and the boy. While Saki
uses irony and sarcasm while describing Van Cheele to the point of making him a
caricature, he refrains from fully describing the actual nature of the boy. The few
phrases that are used to describe him and his behavior makes him even more
mysterious. Usually, descriptions are used to reveal the nature of a character. The
author’s description of the boy conceals, rather than revealing his character. What is
ironic about this is that the boy is supposedly called Gabriel Earnest, although there is
nothing earnest/honest about him. He remains a character whose identity is shrouded in
doubt.

The anthropomorphised Gabriel-Ernest forces the reader to question the glibly-accepted

hierarchy which places people above animals. Although initially presented as a boy
himself, Gabriel-Ernest echoes Swift’s A Modest Proposal in his casual references to
child-eating, and while his higher status as an animal is assumed throughout the story,
he is also a prime example of how Saki combines the apparently disparate elements of
the human and the animal. Even though he more often places them in opposition to
each other, Saki suggests, through Gabriel-Ernest, that humans and animals have more
in common than might initially meet the eye. The character represents a malevolent
version of the half-human, half-animal beings of classical mythology – satyrs and
centaurs – his animal spirit lurking dangerously inside an ostensibly human body. The
literary technique of zoomorphism is used to consistently liken the boy to an animal; a
faun, a tiger or an otter. The idea of wild children and wolf boys had long captured the
Victorian imagination. With England’s history of colonization, tales of children being
raised by animals in exotic lands was something that readers were all too familiar with
(for example, The Jungle Book). Gabriel-Ernest seems to have inherited this tradition.
Only in this case, it is coupled with the obsession of Gothic fiction with gothic creatures
like the werewolves. Interestingly, his name refers to a holy image of an angel, while
ironically his character is wild, animalistic and deviant.

Van Cheele himself is quite easily taken in by appearances and prejudices than well-
reasoned arguments, which makes him prone to hasty conclusions. These character
traits seem to affect his judgment of Gabriel Earnest

Humans tend to control what they understand and fear what they don’t. This theme is
intertwined in the story and is brought out in Van Cheele’s interaction with the wild boy.
Van Cheele seems to believe that he has complete authority over his woods. The tone
that Van Cheele uses is mostly arrogant and obnoxious as he cannot tolerate anyone
undermining him. He abhors the boy from first sight as the latter has “a touch of
patronage” in his voice, actions and attitude in general. He feels challenged by the boy
who easily exhibits a superior understanding of matters and superior intelligence. He
asks the boy logical questions, and seems to be demanding logical answers. He
commands the boy to leave ” his woods” and even threatens to use force, if necessary.
His need to command betrays a certain sense of insecurity, which the boy is quick to
smell. Despite living in Van Cheele’s forest, the boy does not recognize his authority..
The idea of authority is turned upside down when the boy jumps into the pool and
appears before Van Cheele, causing him to fall prone in front of the person who he had
commanded to leave his forest, some moments earlier.

Essentially, Van Cheele is afraid of the boy, probably because he cannot understand or
control his existence. He gets innately frightened by his meeting and discovery of the
boy lounging on the banks of a pond on his property and by Gabriel-Ernest’s ability to
impose on him. This is a common trait of humans, to fear the unknown and the
unordinary. As an upper class gentleman, Van Cheele’s prim and proper reality is
juxtaposed by the rough and lowly one of Gabriel Earnest, and while he is initially
intrigued by the novelty of it, it also overwhelms and frightens him later.

Drawing in part on his own unhappy childhood, from which his fiction suggests he could
never fully detach himself, Saki reveals not only the child’s bitter world of alienation and
oppression, but also the secret spheres – in all their mythic power – which children are
so adept at fashioning for themselves in order to challenge their role as victims. In his
story, Saki consistently manages to suspend the reader’s moral judgment through
sparkling satire and the shock ending. He also keeps up the flow of dialogue and
description, as for instance in his casual personification of animals and dehumanization
of people. Although this is one of the darker tales written by Saki, its tone is wryly
humorous and it may be regarded as a dark comedy. In his story, Saki consistently
manages to suspend the reader’s moral judgment through sparkling satire and the
shock ending. He also keeps up the flow of dialogue and description, as for instance in
his casual personification of animals and dehumanization of people.