The Lumber Room - Analysis and interpretation. The Lumber Room is a short story written by Hector Hugh Munro, also known as Saki. He is widely acclaimed for his short stories and is known for featuring children in his stories.

That affected the Aunt and as a second punishment, she forbad him to go in to the gooseberry garden. He could not understand why, but he had a plan to do something even more exiting.

The gooseberry garden was a beautiful place and the children could only come in, if they had gotten permission from the aunt or another adult. But the gooseberry garden was like a paradise for the children. And that was the only place they wanted to be. Except for Nicholas. He had other plans, other ideas and other dreams.

There were only Nicholas, the aunt and the household left. And the aunt was certain on the fact that Nicholas would try to sneak in through one of the two doors into the gooseberry garden. So she was gardening from a place where she could see both entrances. And Nicholas kept walking towards the doors just to see if she thought he would try anything. He did it a few times and his suspicions were confirmed. He then went inside, where he crawled up a chair and took a big key from one of the top shelves. He knew what it would open. The Lumber Room.

But he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t used to opening doors with keys, so he had tried it before on some of the other doors. And he was now prepared. He didn’t know what was hiding behind the door, but he knew that none of the other children had ever been in there, and that he would be the first. And that filled him with self-esteem and pride.

He didn’t even have to sneak over to the Lumber Room, because he knew where Aunt was. He turned the key and the door opened. He was amazed. It was paradise for a boy that age. Doing something forbidden and seeing an old place with so many secrets was simply “cool”. He was stunned. He noticed the colours around the room. And found an old painting with a huntsman who had killed a deer. Then Nicholas sat down on some old cloths and started wondering.

He is a different child from the rest of the children in the orphanage. What the other children wants is just to have fun. But Nicholas wants more. He wants to do something with his life and needs some challenges in his life.

Even though we are not told what Nicholas feels and think, we still get inside his head. Through his actions, we find out what kind of person he is.

After he has been starring at the painting for a few minutes or more he hear his “aunt” shout his name. At first he ignores her, as he always does, but when her shouts starts to sound more and more like screams, he locks the door to the lumber room and puts the key back in its place. When he comes out of the building he sees his “aunt” had fallen in to a huge tank. She had slipped and could not get up. She asked him for help, but Nicholas was smarter than that. She told him to go and fetch the ladder from the gooseberry garden, but Nicholas’ answer was: “I was told not to go into the gooseberry garden”. His “aunt” got mad and told him to do it anyway, but Nicholas wouldn’t give in: “Your voice doesn’t sound like “aunt’s”. You may be the evil one tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the evil one tempts me and I always yield. This time I’m not going to yield.” His “aunt” gets angrier for every word he says, but in an odd way, she can’t yell at him. He is using his “aunts” own words against herself and he is proud of himself.  He knows what he is doing and in the end, he wins.