“The Interlopers” Analysis

Human nature and the effects of the natural world and social environment on it can be seen greatly in the short-story “The Interlopers” written by H. H. Munro. In “The Interlopers” Munro has placed two feuding men into an environment of hostility that eventually gets the best of the two. The excerpt analyzed will be the following: The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. But a man who has been brought up under the code of restraining civilization cannot easily nerve himself to shoot down his neighbor in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offense against his hearth and honor.

(Munro, 270-271) In this passage, the two foes can easily be seen in a situation that is very threatening. The urge that the two men have to do what they have always wanted with his opponent is an element of the id. This murderous instinct is soon shown up by the civility that the two savages have. The two men cannot do this terrible act against each other with the upraising that the two have had. But their moral dilemma is soon brought to an end when “Nature’s own violence overwhelmed them both”. This violence ending the direct threat of violence the two were in, and it changed the goal of the meeting from success to survival.

The two men now had to make it through the “falling [of the] beach tree” (Munro, 271). At first, though, survival was not the main thought on the mind of the two, for each believed his party was closer. But, they would soon find out the party that came to their rescue would be on neither of the two’s side. The bitterness “both men spoke with” concerning their possible defeats was soon changed into talk of those bonded. The two men, in their time of physical and mental unrest, find themselves soon coming into a friendly conversation that settles the disputes they have so bitterly met about. The nature of the two had been turned, and now both were together in their fight against nature and time, but nature would get the best of both.

The understanding of the two men was that each of their parties should be arriving shortly due to there position so far behind them, but this was of no matter, when one heard and saw a group coming to the rescue. But, this was a numerous group. This was a very fast-moving group. This surprised them, until the surprise was up. “Wolves” were on the way.