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Story Summary: The Accidental Tourist by Bill Bryson

The Accidental Tourist by Bill Bryson is a short story that highlights the importance of having suave and elegant manners at the time of travelling. In this story, we see that the narrator almost flies over 100,000 miles every year because of his job’s nature. So, we can say that the narrator is an accidental tourist, though he doesn’t enjoy travelling but still he has to because of his job. However in his own words he says that he is sort of a confused man who often forgets the roads and gets into wrong alleys or gets trapped into self-locking doors. In this story, he takes us to some of his awry travel experiences where he did some crazy things, though unwittingly.

Most of his experiences are based around airports or inside the flights. On one instant, while flying to England from Boston with family for Christmas, he forcibly opened the zip of his bag, as a result it broke down and all the stuff littered on the ground. This made him embarrassed and the people around him.

One day in the flight, he got up to tie his shoelace, but then suddenly the person on the next seat pulled up the full recliner, he got crushed into his seat and with great difficulty he managed to get himself freed. This indicates that he was absentminded when tying shoelace.

On other day, he repeatedly spilled drink on a lady’s lap sitting beside him. Because of this habit, one day his wife let herself opened the lid of the food container. In another funny instance the narrator was busy noting something with a pen, but at the same time he was sucking the one side of his pen and speaking to a young lady. When he visited the lavatory, he found blue stains on his chin, color, hands and so on. There are some instances when the narrator, owing to his poor memory, forgot some or other thing and landed himself up in trouble.

The message from this story is that travelling is not everyone’s cup of tea. One needs to be alert and graciously presentable to avoid getting into blunders or causing inconvenience to others. You need to have good manners and immaculate presence of mind while travelling to far-off distance. Imagine what will you do if you lost your documents and money and gadgets?

For CBSE class9 syllabus, read all stories summary from your Moments textbook.

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Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 26, 2018 at 9:50 AM

    Thanks! Helped my son rishi a lot

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJanuary 17, 2019 at 6:01 PM

    Thanks for helping

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJanuary 21, 2019 at 10:37 PM

    Thanks ... thank you

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 29, 2019 at 7:37 AM

    Thank u soo much helped me a lot..

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownJanuary 30, 2019 at 4:42 PM

    thanks😊

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownFebruary 3, 2019 at 7:20 AM

    Thanks for helping

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownFebruary 8, 2019 at 7:55 PM

    Thank you for nothing 😜 😜

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownFebruary 10, 2019 at 6:13 PM

    Yes it is very nice summary.
    I like it the most

    ReplyDelete
  9. UnknownFebruary 11, 2019 at 5:44 PM

    I'm really happy day before exam my son was not feeling well and he looked this and study then he scored grate MARK
    Without reading text or note

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2019 at 3:58 AM

    Very well written

    ReplyDelete
  11. UnknownFebruary 18, 2019 at 6:38 AM

    Thanks a lot.... it's a great summary... I really like it...

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownFebruary 18, 2019 at 5:42 PM

    Thank you 1😘

    ReplyDelete
  13. UnknownMarch 3, 2019 at 7:45 PM

    Thanks for post this summary

    ReplyDelete
  14. UnknownMarch 4, 2019 at 7:43 AM

    Thanks for explaining

    ReplyDelete
  15. UnknownMarch 5, 2019 at 6:56 PM

    Thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  16. UnknownOctober 23, 2019 at 8:42 AM

    Thank you, fantastic explanations 👍

    ReplyDelete
  17. UnknownNovember 6, 2019 at 6:26 AM

    Thanks a lot you have beautifully covered the whole story

    ReplyDelete
  18. UnknownFebruary 3, 2020 at 12:39 AM

    Thanks 4 the story summery

    ReplyDelete
  19. UnknownFebruary 3, 2020 at 12:40 AM

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  20. UnknownFebruary 13, 2020 at 5:20 AM

    I express my gratitude to you

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousOctober 8, 2022 at 1:34 AM

    I thankyou a lot it helped me to understand well and also helped in my English project

    ReplyDelete
  22. AnonymousFebruary 7, 2023 at 6:42 PM

    Complete the story in 3 paragraph

    ReplyDelete

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