The text under analysis, “A touch of realism” is written by an outstanding British novelist and a short – story writer Hector Munro. He satirized things that he hated. H. H. Munro is best known for his humorous and very interesting short stories. He uses irony, sarcasm and black humour often in order to deride the human vices and to show inefficiency of actions of moralistic, hypocritical persons.

Lady Blonze recieves her guests at home for Christmas party. She asks for any ideas for it and Blanche Boveal shares with the variant she has tried some days ago with her other friends. Everyone choose a character and then reveal it without saying who is it. Others try to guess and the best performer takes a prize. Lady Blonze likes the idea in spite of skepticism of her husband, Sr Nicolas. So they accept it. The dinner has gone in very slow and lazy manner because nobody is pleased to perform their characters. But accidantly the situation changes, almost everybody begin taking an active part, the reason of it the chance to get a prize from hands of Mrs. Klammerstein which promise to be pretty good and rich.

The title of the story brings a certain ironical mood as the whole story. Saki as usual makes fun of people`s customs and their attitude to them. A touch of realism turns out a notorious [nəʊˈtɔːrɪəs] cynicism which comes to epic failed absurd.

The story is narrated as a dialog with some exposition. The speech tonallity is ridiculous and ironical. Saki as a master of his style put some epiphets to decorate his story: “something really original”, “but it was extremely interesting and amusing”. The semantic field of the story is about holidays due to the time the author has described:Christmas, gifts, chrostmas party. Also the author uses a lot of references to the bible to create the atmosphere of the celebration of one of the most famouse christian holidays - Christmas.

By the way we may notice that the whole text is penetrated with a great number of allusions often to emphosize the ironical mood of the story what is very typical for Saki. He applies some geografical allusions: The Yarrow, The tuileries Gardens; some allusions to the literature: “isn`t there a thing of Moliere`s ‘LE MALADE IMAGINAIRE’”, “the Lost Ten tribes”. The author takes them describing the proccess of the game. To disclose tastes and preferences in the cultural way of that time and that people Saki touches a folklore [ˈfəʊklɔː] : “the ballad of Little Bo-Peep”,“the Jolly Miller on the banks of Dee”(it`s ingenuous song in England which goes through the ages, even you can hear it nowadays). To deep the comprehantion the author resorts to some cultural and national stereotypes: “he has madness on the side of his family and a Hungarian grandmother on the other”. The Hungarian are famous for their complicative character and fervent (задорный) and very positive temper in the same time what makes them very strange persons. In this way with the certain irony the author describes the audience which is going to celebrate Chrismas.

It is not only one example of combination of allusion and irony here. This combo is an irresistable weapon against people`s foolishness and hypocritical attitude to the church, it`s a chross against scum in Saki`s hands. He applies it to reveal how his heroes treat the religion, often in slighting (принебрежительный) and superficial (поверхностный) manner: “I was St. Francis of Assisi (эсизай)...I kept getting up in the middle of a meal, and throwing out food to the birds; you see, the chief thing that one remembers of St. Francis is that he was fond of the birds”. As matter of fact St. Francis was famous for his compassion (сострадание) in global way to all animation and inanimation but not only to the poor birds of cause. One other example: “If Skatterly took it into his head to represent a Bull of Bashan, well, I`d rather not be here” and one more: “it would be a small satisfaction to say to him afterwards: You`ve behaved as no Bull of Bashan would have behaved”. Saki again demonstrates excellent knowledges of the bible mythology describing indirectly the slowness (несообразительность) of the characters. In my opinion the irony which can get at the head of this story is “Of course we shan`t allow any Bible characters”. I found it`s very logic not to use the Bible characters at the Bible holiday.

In addition some of names of the characters in the story are chosen with a certain aim. For example, the husband of Lady Blonze, Sir Nicolas obviously sorts with St Nicholas who was a great opponent of all manifestations (проявления) of paganism (язычество). Purposely the author puts the antithesis (антИфэсиз) in his mouth: “It might do very well at the Mathesons, where they had rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a different matter”. So he is the only person who realizes from the very beginning that this game wouldn`t be ok.

There is one more name which is applied intentionally (умышленно). Waldo Plubley. There are a lot of tales, counting-out games with the idea to find Waldo bacause he is always lost. As we can see the same, Waldo in this story appears in the same context, the sheep was lost in his room and he was lost in the morning so it`s a kind of game with words which the author applies to creat the radiculous mood.

There is one symbole in the text. It`s the piano which symbolizes something high and sublime (возвышенное) as culture and faith. On this example we can see the attitude to such things of characters: “Rachel`s love of piano music was not indiscriminate, and concentrated itself chiefly on selections rendered by her idolised offspring”. The case is that people pretend to like some institutes of our life but in fact they want only benifits they get from it. This massage is proved by irony: “The Klammersteins were deservedly popular as Christmas guests; they gave expensive gifts lavishly on Christmas Day and New Year”.

Describing the change of mood of people when they has known about possible good prize the author resorts not to simple irony but to hard sarcasm: “The close time for impersonation efforts came to an end with the final withdrawal of Moritz and Augustia from the piano”. Even the combo of allusion plus irony changes to the combo of allusion plus sarcasm: “Blanche Boveal retired early, leaving the room in a series of laboured leaps that she hoped might be recognised as a tolerable imitation of Pavlova. Vera Durmot, the 16 year old flapper, expressed her confident opinion that the performance was intended to typify Mark Twain`s famouse jumping frog”. So Saki reveals a great contrast which has appeared when people got the motivation, their greedy nature has been uncovered, they start to compete really hard, sometimes without any limits.

The sarcasm slowly overflows (перетекать) to the absurd: “Yes, sheep. You don`t suppose I`m looking for giraffies, do you?” Step by step the absurd becomes more absurd: “...the sheep will turn up all right in the morning. - I daresay, said Bertie gloomily, without their tales”. Then the author emphosize the effect by the metaphor: Nice fool I shall look with a lot of Manx sheep”. (Manx - it`s a breed of cats with cut tales).

The absurd achives its peak when it turns out that Cyril Scatterly and Vera have left the Klammersteins even those who should give the prize on Slogberry Moor in purpose to reveal what their characters are meant to be. The author applies epiphets to describe the tense of the moment: “It`s most inhuman”, “a chorus of indignant bewilderment”.

The final of the story as usual in Saki`s works is unexpectable. He concludes it with a great combination of irony and allusion: “I`ve got it! Ferdinand and Isabella deporting the Jews! Oh, Lovely! Those two have certainly won the prize”. The author sneer at the case that people can do incredibly wild and absurd things to achieve their selfish aims.

Persanally I like the story and I`m glad that I have chosen this one. It really makes me laugh in some moments. I`ve descovered Saki as a genious author for me one more time. Even there is a massage to think about. The case is that people pretend to like some institutes of our life but in fact they want only benifits they get from it. Certainly we can`t bear with a hypocritical and cinic attitude of people in our life but we can laugh at it and it is our remedy.