Compare and contrast “The Interlopers” by Saki and “The ...



Comparing and contrasting “The Interlopers” & “The Machine That Won the War”

“The Interlopers” and “The Machine that Won the War” are both well-written short stories with very few main characters and a setting that closely influences the conflict. But they have very different plots and are different in the way they are told. The ways in which the characters interact with each other is also different. This paper talks about the characters, setting, and conflict in each.

The main characters in “The Interlopers” are Ulrich Von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym. At the start of the story they are described like this: “Each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other” (Saki). And by the end of the story they have become friends, although their friendship is presumably short-lived. There are three main characters in “The Machine That Won the War”: Lamar Swift, “Executive director of the solar federation” (Asimov) John Henderson, Chief Programmer of Multivac during the war, and Max Jablonsky, previous Chief Interpreter of Multivac. In the pre-story time the three were not equals but they were working on the same side for the same goal. In “The Interlopers” the main characters were enemies who then became friends before dying, whereas in “The Machine That Won the War” the main characters were working on the same side during the war and were each other’s superiors and inferiors.

“The Interlopers” is set at night in winter and “In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the Carpathians” (Saki). In “The Interlopers” there are multiple lines and passages that reinforce the idea that the forest is really creepy. “The Machine That Won the War” is set inside the corridors of Multivac, a giant computer in the future. “The Machine That Won the War” is set shortly after the end of a war that lasted for ten years. The settings of “The Interlopers” and “The Machine That Won the War” are different in that “The Interlopers” is set in a very natural outdoors setting, (a forest) and “The Machine That Won the War” is set inside a high tech computer in the future. The settings are alike in that in both stories the plot is very much influenced by the setting.

“The Interlopers” and “The Machine That Won the War” both have character vs. character conflict. In “The Interlopers” the character vs. character conflict is conflict between the families of Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym over the piece of land that the story is set in. The character vs. character conflict in “The Machine That Won the War” is the conflict between the people of the Solar Federation and the Denebians. “The Machine That Won the War” begins with the lack of conflict because the war that had been going on for a decade was over. The conflict in the stories is alike in that in both stories the conflict is resolved before the end of the story and the conflict in the stories is different in that in “The Machine That Won the War” the conflict is a war and in “The Interlopers” the conflict is only a feud; a bitter feud, perhaps; but still only a feud.

In conclusion, “The Interlopers” and “The Machine That Won the War”’ are both well-written short stories. They both have settings that closely influence the conflict and very few main characters. Even though they are set in very different places and times, they are both very good and interesting stories.

Works cited

Asimov, Isaac. “The Machine That Won the War”. Mercury Press, Inc., 1961. Print.

Saki. “The Interlopers”. 1919. Print.

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