What effect does the author’s choice of resolution have on the passage’s overall meaning?

Saki is famous for his surprise endings and “The Interlopers” certainly includes one. Indeed just as the two men make peace with one another, nature once again appears in order to deliver a violent blow (this time a deadly one). As the two men call out for help they are heard by a pack of wolves instead of their fellow men. Though Saki leaves the violence off the page, the reader is given enough to know the characters’ fate.

A theme that is common in many of Saki’s short stories and appears again here is the dominance of nature. Saki greatly respected Darwin and continually positions wild animals as dominant over socially respectable human beings in his works. In this story, the wolves, classically wild, and natural forces generally prevail over the landowning men. The wolves’ appearance upends both the men’s and the readers’ expectations and prompts a violent end. This interruption (or correction) occurs precisely when Saki offers peace by having the two men reconcile.

This dominance of nature also relates back to Saki’s choice of title for this short story. “The Interlopers” as a title is ambiguous because it does not signal who the true interlopers are. Are the men the interlopers to one another? Are the wolves interlopers to the men? Ultimately, given Saki’s respect of the wild over the aristocratic, as well as the ending of this story, it appears most likely that the humans are interlopers on a natural order that would remain undisturbed but for their meddling (Byrne 184-5). Particularly, the men here attempt to impose a set of aristocratic norms and values, namely landownership, on a landscape that is resistant to control and containment. Saki cautions against such attempts by having the men meet such a violent and fatal end.