A Story is a short story written by Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. This story is all about a day’s outing to Charabanc made by a group of adults and it presents the adult’s world humorously from a boy’s perspective.

This story is about the outing of 30 strange adult-only males to Porthcawl by Charabanc called. However, they never reached there as they stopped in every pub on the way.

The narrator of the story is a small boy who is living with his uncle and aunt. The narrator says that there is no beginning and ending in the story, there is something in the middle. The boy compares his uncle Mr. Thomas and his and Mrs. Sarah. Mr. Thomas is a noisy, filthy, irresponsible, drunkard and enormously big.

The boy uses a lot of metaphors and smiles and compares him to buffalo. When Mr. Thomas enters the house, the house looks smaller. Whenever he eats, he litters the waistcoat like a park after a picnic. On the other hand, the narrator compares Mrs. Sarah to a cat. She is very small quite clean hardworking and responsible. She is almost busy in dusting the China dog, cleaning the house and feeding the buffalo. Despite the dissimilarities, they love each other very much.

On every Saturday he allows Mrs. Sarah to beat him on the head. For that, he picks her up and puts on to a chair. Then, she beats him with whatever is in her hand but almost all the time see uses the china dog.

They have their own shop in front of their house where Mr. Thomas and his friends have gathered together in the shop to discuss the outing. Mr. Thomas is the leader of the group, they submit the list of the people to him. His friends are also dirty, filthy and careless like him. Benjamin Franklin is appointed the treasure of the outing. Benjamin reported that he had collected enough money for the bus fare and 20 cases of pale ale (Light Beer). He also complained with Mr. Thomas for being followed by Will Sentry all the times. Will Sentry says that he follows him every time because Benjamin may misuse the fund like Bob The Fiddle last year.

As the outing group talks and behaves, the members seem to be careless and stupid and only thinking about themselves.

Mrs. Sarah doesn’t like her husband to go outing because he drinks so much. She threatens to go to her mother’s home if he goes outing. But Mr. Thomas says that he and outing can’t be separated from each other.

Despite his irresponsible manner, she loves him so much. When she goes to her motherhouse, she prepares some eggs and leaves a note to him. She also tells him to take off the boots before going to bed.

As there is no one to look after the boy, Mr. Thomas wants to carry the narrator with them. The outing members don’t want to take any women, children and old people to the outing because they think that they can create problems on the way.

On the day of outing everyone gatherers and gets on Charbanac. As they go out of the village Mr. Thomas notices that old O. Jones is left behind. Then they go back to his house in order to receive him, but the old man proudly says he doesn’t want to go out at all. Mr. Weazely creates another problem on the way saying that he forgets his teeth on the mantelpiece.

As they reached the mountain sheep, at the beginning the landowner welcomes them as a wolf welcomes sheep for eating them. Mr. Thomas tells the boy to stay outside and look after the bus. He is alone and plays with the cows. He chases them by throwing stones at them.

After some time the narrator enters the pub and watch their activities. He finds them completely wild and drunk. They have finished everything including onions in the pub. Then they moved to other pubs one by one. They finished drinks at every pub until evening.

As they head for Porthcawl at the last, they come to a river. They decide to stop the bus and play with water. It was very late in the evening so they decided to cancel the trip to Porthcawl. They return from the river when they felt cold. They stopped at the Hermit’s Nest for a rum. After they got drunk they got on the bus for coming back to their houses. Old O. Jones wants to prepare supper in the bus by using primus stone. However, Weazely fells and says that he is about to be suffocated by the smoke. Then they stop the Charbanac and carry everything to the field and start cooking. They take out the remaining cases of beer and start drinking it. Old O. Jones began to cook sausage and crushed potatoes in the middle of the bus. Feeling sleepy and tired narrator began to sleep leaning, under the mountainous waistcoat of his uncle.

Thus, the story ends abruptly without giving hints to the readers.

Question. How does the boy, the narrator, look at his uncle and his friends?

Answer. The narrator finds his uncle and his friends whimsical and animalistic. He expresses his attitude towards them using several figures of speech related to animals.

At the beginning of the story, the speaker compares his uncle with an old buffalo squeezed into an airing cupboard. At one point in the story, the narrator says that the members of outing rushed out bleating into the bar. Towards the end of the story, the narrator says that Mr. Weazely would cough like a Billy goat.

All these smiles and metaphors justify that the narrator views his uncle and his friends with human beings degenerated into animality.

Question. Write a paragraph to describe the relation between Thomas (the boy’s uncle and his wife).