The Use of Setting in the Short Story The Interlopers

In the short story “The Interlopers” the author, Saki, uses the setting of the story to enhance the literary elements of plots, conflict, theme, and atmosphere.

In the beginning of the short, Saki uses lots of descriptive words to describe the setting. He describes the forest as “narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on the its outskirts was not remarkable for the game it harbored or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealousy guarded of all its owner’s territorial possessions.

” This part of the forest caused the feud years ago. From authors description it does not sound like a good piece of land and worth fighting over.

The feud is now between Ulrich von Grandwitz and Georg Znaeym. Both men want to kill each other. The author portraits this deep hatred when he describes them coming face-to-face. “Each had a rifle in his had: each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind.

” It is obvious from this statement that there is clearly an evil feud between them.

Ulrich soon finds himself in a conflict with nature. The author describes a raging storm and a terrible accident. “A Fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads; and ere they could leap aside, a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them. “The anger and violence of the stormy night is like how Ulrich and Georg treat each other.

Feuds never end in a good way.

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“We’ll fight this quarrel out to the death- you and I and our foresters, with no cursed interlopers to come between us.” By using the word interloper the reader can predict that the two feuding men will be interfered but not by whom they think, although they do not want to be interfered. A change happens to the men as they are stuck under a tree.

The author’s word choice leads the reader to believe they will be friends and there will be a happy ending. “For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. But the author has already set the scene as a dark and foreboding. The reader is unsuspecting but not surprised when both men die From the beginning the author sets a dark and gloomy mood. In the end the men being eaten by wolves is not a surprise by the way he sets the scene. His descriptive setting enhances the literary elements of his short story.