The Interlopers

A couple days ago, we read The Interlopers in class. This is a story about two men who hate each other for a passion. One, stormy night they met in the forest to fight to the death. After nature took out its rage on them and the forest, they became friends but ended being trapped and a pack of wolves came to hunt them down.

This short story has many examples of imagery used to describe the setting. These examples are placed everywhere throughout the story. One example is on the first page when the author says, "He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight and sound of the marauders." This creates a very descriptive image in your head of where the character is and what he is trying to do. I loved that the author gave examples like this because it created such a good image, made it easier to read, and gave me some ideas on how to make my writing better.

 

Another good example is on page two when the author says, " 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 passion of a lifetime." This quote uses many verbs to describe the scene. It expresses how both men stood glaring and you could sense the hate they felt towards each other.

 

When I read the story plainly for the first time, I thought it was awful. But after analyzing it and understanding what the author meant, I ended up liking it and thought it was a very good story. The only thing I didn't like was how they didn't describe the characters very well. Alos the ending was very quick and I thought it wasn't very good.