“The Interlopers”

1. “The Interlopers” By H.H. Munro: Saki

2. Annotation & DIDLS • Addition of notes / comments / questions / explanations to a work designed to develop understanding / meaning • Diction • Imagery • Detail • Language • Syntax

3. Literature Basics • Plot • Character[ization] • Theme • Setting • Point of View • Tone • Motif

4. The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all its owner's territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days of his grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty landowners; the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long series of poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between the families for three generations. The neighbour 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, as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind-scourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like driven things to-night, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep through the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could guess the quarter from whence it came.

5. “Poison” by Roald Dahl; Background • 1858: The Raj: “Rule” / “Kingdom” took [nearly] two years to establish at a cost of 36 million pounds • 1940s: The Raj begins to fall apart due to • Cost of WWII • Legal / Governmental Changes: Laws allowing more self-rule in India • Outside Influences: U. S. pressures to end Imperialism

6. Harry’s Character • 'Stop. Wait a moment, Timber.' I could hardly hear what he was saying. He seemed to be straining enormously to get the words out. 'What's the matter, Harry?' 'Sshhh!' he whispered. 'Sshhh! For God's sake don't make a noise. Take your shoes off before you come nearer, Please do as I say, Timber.' The way he was speaking reminded me of George Barling after he got shot in the stomach when he stood leaning against a crate containing a spare aeroplane engine, holding both hands on his stomach and saying things about the German pilot in just the same hoarse straining half whisper Harry was using now. 'Quickly, Timber, but take your shoes off first.' I couldn't understand about taking off the shoes but I figured that if he was as ill as he sounded I'd better humour him, so I bent down and removed the shoes and left them in the middle of the floor. Then I went over to his bed. 'Don't touch the bed! For God's sake don't touch the bed!' He was still speaking like he'd been shot in the stomach and I could see him lying there on his back with a single sheet covering three-quarters of his body. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas with blue, brown, and white stripes, and he was sweating terribly. It was a hot night and I was sweating a little myself, but not like Harry. His whole face was wet and the pillow around his head was sodden with moisture. It looked like a bad go of malaria to me.

7. 'What is it, Harry?’ ‘A krait,' he said. A krait! Oh, my God! Where'd it bite you? How long ago?' Shut up,' he whispered. ‘Listen, Harry,’ I said, and I leaned forward and touched his shoulder. 'We've got to be quick. Come on now, quickly, tell me where it bit you.' He was lying there very still and tense as though he was holding on to himself hard because of sharp pain. 'I haven't been bitten,' he whispered, 'Not yet. It's on my stomach. Lying there asleep.' I took a quick pace backwards. I couldn't help it, and I stared at his stomach or rather at the sheet that covered it. The sheet was rumpled in several places and it was impossible to tell if there was anything underneath. 'You don't really mean there's a krait lying on your stomach now?' 'I swear it.' 'How did it get there?' I shouldn't have asked the question because it was easy to see he wasn't fooling. I should have told him to keep quiet. 'I was reading,' Harry said, and he spoke very slowly, taking each word in turn and speaking it carefully so as not to move the muscles of his stomach. 'Lying on my back reading and I felt something on my chest, behind the book. Sort of tickling.

8. “Poison” pages 3 & 4; Pacing, Suspense, & the Outcome • What techniques does the author use to create suspense and interest within the story? • Examine the last two pages for evidence. If there is no krait, and, therefore, no real poison…what is the figurative poison within the story? Evidence?

9. “Mark of the Beast” by Rudyard Kipling, published 1890 • Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native Proverb. • EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen. • This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in India: it may be stretched to explain my story. • My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case. Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described. • When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy, genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course, limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.

10. He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station, and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year's Eve there was a big dinner at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from the uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The Frontier had sent down a contingent o' Catch-'em-Alive-O's who had not seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had come in from the south and were talking 'horse' to the Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang 'Auld Lang Syne' with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away and annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars and medals, and some were married, which was bad, and some did other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove to make money on insufficient experiences.

11. Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky, took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up with old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in the morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard of Dishonour to take Fleete home.

12. “The Destructors” by Graham Greene • “The Destructors” first published in 1954. The setting is London nine years after the end of World War II (1939-1945). During the first sustained bombing attacks on London ("the first blitz") from September 1940 to May 1941, many families slept in the Underground (i.e., subway) stations, which were used as bomb shelters. • Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), England's most famous architect, designed St. Paul's Cathedral and many other late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century buildings. • Graham Greene (1904-1991), who was born just outside London, lived in that city at various stages of his life. • Motifs that could become themes: Clash of Cultures / Class Struggles / Loss of Innocence / etc.

13. The next time the gang became aware of Mr.Thomas was more surprising. Blackie, Mike and a thin yellow boy, who for some reason was called by his surname Summers, met him on the common coming back from the market. Mr.Thomas stopped them. He said glumly, ‘You belong to the lot that play in the car park?’ • Mike was about the answer when Blackie stopped him. As the leader had responsilities, ‘Suppose we are?’ he said ambiguously. • ‘I got some chocolates,’ Mr. Thomas said. ‘Don’t like ‘em myself. Here you are. Not enough to go round, I don’t suppose, There never is,’ he added with sombre conviction. He handed over three packets of Smarties. • The gang were puzzled and perturbed by this action and tried to explain it away. ‘Bet someone dropped them and he picked ‘em up,’ somebody suggested. • ‘Pinched ‘em and then got in a bleeding funk,’ another thought aloud. • ‘It’s a bribe,’ Summers said. ‘He wants us to stop bouncing balls on his wall.’ • ‘We’ll show him we don’t take bribes,’ Blackie said, and they sacrificed the whole morning to the game of bouncing that only Mike was young enough to enjoy. There was no sign from Mr Thomas.

14. no • T said, ‘It’s a beautiful house.’ • ‘What do you mean, a beautiful house?’ Blackie asked with scorn. • ‘It’s got a staircase two hundred years old like a corkscrew. Nothing holds it up.’ • ‘What do you mean, nothing holds it up. Does it float?’ • ‘It’s to do with opposite forces, Old Misery said.’ • ‘What else?’ • ‘There’s panelling.’ • ‘Like in the Blue Boar?’ • ‘Two hundred years old.’ • ‘Is Old Misery two hundred years old?’ • Mike laughed suddenly and then was quiet again. The meeting was in a serious mood. For the first time since T. had strolled into the car park on the first day of the holidays his position was in danger. It only needed a single use of his real name and the gang would be at his heels.

15. ‘What did you do it for?’ Blackie asked. He was just, he had no jealousy, he was anxious to retain T in the gang if he could. It was the word “beautiful” that worried him – that belonged to a class world that you could still see parodied at the Wormsley Common Empire by a man wearing a top hat and a monocle, with a haw-haw accent He was tempted to say, “My dear Trevor, old chap,” and unleash his hell bounds. “If you’d broken in,” he said sadly – that indeed would have been an exploit worthy of the gang. . . . • T raised eyes, as gray and disturbed as the drab August day. ‘‘We’ll pull it down,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll destroy it.’’ • Blackie gave a single hoot of laughter and then, like Mike, fell quiet, daunted by the serious implacable gaze. ‘What’d the police be doing all the time?’ he said. • ‘‘They’d never know. We’d do it from inside. I’ve found a way in.’’ He said with a sort of intensity, ”We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an apple. When we came out again there’d be nothing there, no staircase, no panels, nothing but just walls, and then we’d make the walls fall down – somehow.’’

16. ‘We’d go to jug,’ Blackie said. • ‘Who’s to prove? And anyway we wouldn’t have pinched anything.’ He added without the smallest flicker of glee, ‘There wouldn’t be anything to pinch after we’d finished.’ • ‘I’ve never heard of going to prison for breaking things,’ Summers said. • ‘There wouldn’t be time,’ Blackie said. I’ve seen housebreakers at work.’ • ‘There are twelve of us,’ T said. ‘We’d organize.’ • ‘None of us know how…’ • ‘I know,’ T said. He looked across at Blackie. ‘Have you got a better plan?’ • ‘Today,’ Mike said tactlessly, ‘we’re pinching free rides…’ • ‘Free rides,’ T said. ‘You can stand down, Blackie, if you’d rather…’

17. ‘The gang’s got to vote.’ • ‘Put it up then.’ • Blackie said uneasily. ‘It’s proposed that tomorrow and Monday we destroy Old Misery’s house.’ • ‘Here, here,’ said a fat boy called Joe. • ‘Who’s in favor?’ • T said, ‘It’s carried.’ • ‘How do we start?’ Summers asked.

18. ‘He’ll tell you.’ Blackie said. It was the end of his leadership. He went away to the back of the car park and began to kick a stone, dribbling it this way and that. There was only one old Morris in the park, for few cars were left there except lorries; without an attendant there was no safety. He took a flying kick at the car and scraped a little paint off the rear mudguard. Beyond, paying no more attention to him than to a stranger, the gang had gathered round T; Blackie was dimly aware of the fickleness of favor. He thought of going home, of never returning, of letting them all discover the hollowness of T’s leadership, but suppose after all what T proposed was possible – nothing like it had ever been done before. The fame of the Wormsley Common car-park gang would surely reach around London. There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the barrow-boys would hear with respect of how Old Misery’s house had been destroyed. Driven by the pure, simple and altruistic ambition of fame for the gang, Blackie came back to where T stood in the shadow of Misery’s wall.

19. T was giving his orders with decision: it was as though this plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons now in his fifteenth year crystallized with the pain of puberty. ‘You,’ he said to Mike, ‘bring some big nails, the biggest you can find, and a hammer. Anyone else who can better bring a hammer and a screwdriver. We’ll need plenty of them. Chisels too. We can’t have too many chisels. Can anybody bring a saw?’

20. What are the conflicts within these various pieces?