The short stories of H. H. Munro, the English writer who used the pen name “Saki,” are macabre, mordantly witty, acerbic, suspenseful, and masterful works of literature.
“Interlopers,” published in 1919, is all these things and more. Superficially, it has a grim ending, but it challenges readers to consider the value of friendship, the hatefulness of grudges, and their revulsion of physical death. It asks readers to choose what’s more important: friendship or physical life.
Dark Yet Thought-Provoking
The story describes two bitter enemies who have escalated their families’ feud of multiple generations by literally hunting each other. Upon their encounter, bloodshed is only prevented by an accident of nature that temporarily incapacitates both. A conversation, begun in hatred, surprisingly, miraculously turns to charity and new friendship. However, the ending hints very strongly that the reconciled men won’t live to see their resolutions through.
While the New York Times Book Review praised the storytelling, it emphasized the “grimness” that seemed unusual even for Saki. But the reasons for calling it “grim” are superficial.
In his writings, Saki was a pronounced enemy of sentimentality. It’s important to differentiate between the “uplifting” and the “sentimental.” Saki was a great storyteller, and a rule of great storytelling is that there’s no point in a happy ending if it has nothing to do with reality. A “feel-good” ending would provide nothing to readers, who live in reality not on a page.
While a beautiful event occurs—the mending of a feud that has lasted generations—it doesn’t erase a past replete with suspicions, insults, and hateful acts. That past remains; it’s because of that past that the two men are alone and disabled, and it’s because of that past that they’re stuck in a remote place in the cold of winter. The enmity that they and their families have cultivated for generations seems to have died, but the consequences remain.
But desperate situations sometimes offer the only time that people can change for the better. Even if this opportunity is taken advantage of, as it is in this story, danger will likely remain. A good parallel is in Flannery O'Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Once the selfish protagonist is held at gunpoint, she finally becomes admirable. The villain says this about her: “She would have been a good woman if someone had been there to shoot her every minute of her life.” Something similar can be said about the two men in “Interlopers.”
The sad ending is completely appropriate because, while this story depicts an inspiring reconciliation, it simultaneously conveys a truth: Long-held hatred invites self-punishment.
A reader’s evaluation of the two men’s fate in the “Interlopers” depends on how he or she decides what’s more important: physical life or love. Seeing this question put so simply can startle a reader into acknowledging the transcendental nature of human friendship. It also encourages readers to consider, more seriously, other transcendentals: mysterious and hopeful things like eternal life, truth, goodness, beauty, and God.
