ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (/dʌnˈseɪni/; 24

July 1878 – 25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work,
mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More
than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime,[1]:29 (I.A.92) and both original
work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's œuvre includes many
hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He
achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during
the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking
world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's
Daughter and The Gods of Pegāna, wherein he devised his own fictional pantheon
and laid the groundwork for the Fantasy genre. He was the inventor of an
asymmetric version of chess called Dunsany's Chess.
Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish
peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited
house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory,
received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-
shooting champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted extensively. He died
in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.

THE TITLE:
THE REWARD: It denotes some kind of respect, or acceptance of somebody’s service or
a homage to the actions of a person.
Setting:
The story is presented in a club where two groups of people were discussing the need of
opportunity and the value of determination. Both groups favour their own view point.
THEME OF THE STORY:
The story is written in fantasy mode. A young man named Gorgios planned to become a
court acrobat. He was just a young man of 16 when he first thought about it. His parents
forbade him to waste his time in this foolish thing but he opposed them. It took him 60
years to become a court acrobat. In the end he considered his parents right.