An Hour Vs Interloper

When you analyze two great stories, from two famous writers there are bound to be some distinctions and connections between them. You just have to look hard enough. The differences the similarities between The Interlopers and The Story Of An Hour are noticeable and deserve through examination. The main conflict, setting, irony, characters, and deaths are just a few things we could compare and contrast between these two short stories.
A good story always has a main conflict. In The Interlopers, the main conflict is man vs. man. In The Story Of An Hour, the main conflict is man vs. himself or his emotions. Obviously, the two stories have a conflict with man on one side or another. This often happens nowadays. People are constantly in a conflict
with one thing or another. In The Interlopers, Ulrich and Znaeym, are hunting each other. The men have both been on the disputed hunting land and now they are both willing to kill each other as a result of building tension and anger. The author tells us that, “The neighbor feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he detested and wished ill to, it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game snatcher and raider of the disputed border forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill will of the two men had not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another’s blood, (Saki 2)”.
In The Story Of An Hour, it is a different kind of conflict. The woman is fighting her own emotions and feelings about her husband's “death”. She can’t control her feelings so eventually she goes into shock and dies.
“She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. (Chopin 1)”
This quote gives us the understanding that she had a hard time controlling her emotions and she need to fight them. Mrs. Mallard already had heart trouble, so the news was to much to bear. This resulted in a man vs. himself conflict. The conflicts in the two stories both had to do with man but they faced two different kinds of conflicts people can experience.
Between the two stories, there are a lot of differences.
In The Story Of An Hour, they mention that Mrs. Mallard had heart troubles. In this context they were talking about actual medical heart troubles. “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. (Chopin 1)” Her friends were trying not to give her a heart attack by breaking the news to her. But, in The Interlopers, I believe that both the men had a different kind of heart trouble. They had emotional heart troubles and were filled with hate for the other man. This is an example of a difference between the short stories. Another difference between the stories is the setting. In Saki’s story, the setting was a forest. Disputed hunting land to be exact. This made it easy for the author to incorporate nature, the tree branch, in the story. However, in Kate Chopin's story, the setting was in a house. Therefore, it made it more difficult to incorporate the nature, requiring her to add it in a less direct metaphorical way. This shows us the difference in the stories and the
authors. Despite all the differences between the stories, there are actually quite a few similarities. Let's take death for an example. Both stories implied that in the end the characters died. In Mrs.Mallard's case, it was the shock that her husband was not actually dead that killed her.
“Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who `entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his gripsack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. (Chopin 1)”
In both stories, it tells us or hints to us, how the characters died.
“ “Are they your men?” asked Georg.
“Are they your men?” he repeated impatiently, as Ulrich did not answer. “No,” said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a man unstrung with hideous fear. “Who are they?” asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen. “Wolves.” (Saki 7)”
Death is only one thing that the two stories have in common. Similarly, both stories have a similar was that they build suspense. In The Interlopers, the build suspense by giving us the backstory and building up the intensity of the storm that they get caught in. In The Story Of An Hour, they build suspense by starting with giving the audience a piece of information that the characters in the story don't even know yet. But, I do think that because the story is shorter, there is less suspense and it all happens kind of fast. If digged hard enough. I am sure that I would find more similarities in the stories.
In conclusion, both stories give us lots of things to study, analyze and talk about. Despite the the large time gap between when the stories were written, we can see common threads and recurring patterns to which the authors use to build suspense and develop their characters, stories, and settings in a way that the reader would
enjoy.