Conflicts As A Main Driving Force Of The Story In The Short Story The Interlopers By Saki

Conflict plays a very important role in the interlopers and it’s the main highlight of this story. In this story we can find many types of conflicts such as 🙁 man VS man, individual VS society, man VS nature, man VS self).

In this essay, I am going to discuss the different types of conflicts we have in the story.

The first conflict in this story and the most important one is related to man VS man and it takes place between Ulrich and Georg. A good example in the story for this conflict would be ' The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment'. The whole conflict started when the two men started fighting over the ownership of a forest. This feud goes way back because it was there for generations and the two men really couldn’t stand each other to the point of actually wanting to murder each other.

The second type of conflict is related to Individual VS society. This conflict made it harder for the two men to murder each other because society is going to view them as murders and it would affect their reputation and they also wouldn’t get away with this crime due to civilization. An example of this in the story is: 'But a man who has been brought up under the code of a restraining civilization cannot easily nerve himself to shoot down his neighbor in cold blood and without word spoken…'. So they really can't murder each other since society won't accept such a crime and in this case, society is on the right side of the struggle.

Also, another conflict in this story is man VS nature which is an important conflict as well. In this conflict, the force of nature manages to stop a generations-old feud and it reversed the feelings of hate and greed between Ulrich and Georg. So let's say for example: 'And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action a deed of nature's own violence overwhelmed them both. 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 a falling beech tree had thundered down on them.'

So the setting is a very important element in Saki's writing and we see it best here in the interlopers as it stopped the two men from killing each other because both of them needed each other to escape and this caused a reversal to the feelings of hate and greed that they used to have for each other.

Moreover, the last conflict we are going to discuss is man VS self is related to Ulrich and his battle against his inner self and the debate between survival and his rivalry. In this conflict, Ulrich had a feud against himself on moving away from the hate and join forces with Georg since they both needed each other to survive. A great example of this would be: 'in the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred seemed to be dying down.' Ulrich having a tree over him and his enemy being there made him realize how much he needs Georg's help to survive and escape so the feelings of hate started to die.

In conclusion, these conflicts are the main drive in the interlopers and Saki connected 4 different conflicts in a very brilliant way. We have the most important conflict which is man VS man and it shows us how much the two men hated and wanted to murder each other. Then in Individual VS society, he showed us the struggle of the two men not being able to murder each other due to civilization and society. Moreover, another great conflict is man VS nature which was very ironic because it showed us how nature was able to erase great feelings of complete hate and greed between the two men. Last but not least of course which is man VS self and how it displayed the battle between Ulrich and his inner self and wanting to survive.

From my perspective, I found Saki's writing exceptional and that’s because of how he successfully managed to use 4 different conflicts but made them serve one goal which made the interlopers a timeless masterpiece that could be used for anytime or generation.
Another interesting writing I am gopig to further analyze is "Cranes" by Hwang Sun-Won, as it delves into the conflict of humanity vs ideology.