The Hunting Party

“And the ones like me, the mousy nobodies, we don’t always turn out to be the heroes of the tale. Sometimes we have our own dark secrets.”

Katie’s friends perceive her as a successful professional who always follows the rules. Unlike her friend Miranda, Katie isn’t the leader of adventures. She tends to be a follower, a wallflower in the setting of a party. Here, however, Foley characterizes Katie as multilayered. She has her “own dark secrets” that she holds close. This characterization implies that Katie’s friends don’t know her as well as they think they do, and it foreshadows future conflict.

“And, just like that, the landscape, for all its space, seems to shrink around us.”

The landscape’s characterization as shrinking around the friends implies that despite the vastness of the wilderness, the estate feels claustrophobic. This claustrophobia develops through the friends’ discomfort in nature as well as their complicated dynamics. Many of them feel that they must put up a happy front or a fake personality when they come together. Their lack of authenticity with one another echoes their lack of authenticity in the wilderness.

“He has taken lives, many of them in fact. And not just animal. He knows better than anyone that it is not something to boast about. It is a dark place from which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.”

Doug’s past is characterized by violence, which foreshadows potential suspicion of Doug for the murder. Although the narrative reveals that he killed people as a marine, a layer of his past remains unknown in the first few chapters. This makes Doug a mysterious character, though his guilt and self-isolation make him endearing as well. In this quote, Foley clarifies that Doug is disgusted by killing, giving him a more humane quality despite his dark past.

“Remove all of the distractions, and here, in the silence and solitude, the demons they have kept at bay catch up with them.”

Doug’s characterization of the guests parallels their own feelings of inadequacy in the wild. They all harbor secrets and worry that those secrets will be revealed. The group of friends is more suited to city life, where the many distractions help them avoid their problems. This foreshadows an eruption of tension among the friends.

“Life has helped them to feel untouchable. They’re so used to having that invisible safety net around them in their normal lives—connectivity, rapid emergency services, health and safety guidelines—that they assume they carry it around with them everywhere. They sign the waiver happily, because they don’t really think about it. They don’t believe in it. They do not expect the worst to happen to them. If they really stopped to consider it, to understand it, they probably wouldn’t stay here at all.”

Heather is aware of the dangers of the wilderness but must conceal the full truth from her guests. The way guests sign the safety waiver without a second thought differentiates their understanding of Loch Corrin from Heather’s experiences. Key among these problems, as this quote conveys, is Loch Corrin’s isolation. While dangerous things can happen in a metropolis like London, help is sure to arrive right away in a city. However, at Loch Corrin, the danger is in its lack of human connection.

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself. That’s the lizard brain, too.”

This passage adds another layer of danger to the isolation of Loch Corrin. Not only are most guests ill-equipped to deal with the wilderness or the isolation, but they’re also more likely to get in touch with their darker traits. In the fight with isolation, people turn against one another in deeply disturbing ways. This adds tension and gives credence to the idea that the dead guest was a victim of murder, not of an accident.

“Giles’s mention of Wales has opened a conversation about other years past. It is a favorite hobby, raking over our shared history together. These are the experiences that have always bound us, that have given us a tribal sense of affiliation. For as long as we have known each other, we have always spent New Year’s Eve together.”

The tradition of getting together for New Year’s Eve should be a pleasant one, in which old friends reserve time to catch up and spend time with one another. However, this New Year’s Eve is markedly different because of the death of one of their friends. Katie’s identification of their annual trips to develop and solidify their tribalism is important because it implies that the trips are a performance to keep their changing friendships alive. In addition, it heightens the tension of the dead friend, because such a tradition should be about celebration rather than mystery and tragedy.

“I dig my nails into the skin of my palms. I have also been on the other side of this. I know exactly how it feels. Their faces swim before me, upturned, expectant, utterly intent on what I am about to say. I feel a lurch of nausea in the pit of my stomach. What I am about to tell them is going to change their lives forever.”

Heather took the job at Loch Corrin to get away from her past. However, now that she’s responsible for taking care of the guests and their dead friend, the past comes back to bother her. This passage emphasizes the message that one can’t escape one’s demons or responsibilities. Heather never wanted to give bad news again, but she can’t control the world around her. This places her in the role of leader at Loch Corrin despite her feelings about her role.

“But the thought goes through me, all the same: Is it possible that one of these displays is just that? A display? A performance? As they ask me questions about the body, how I found it, how it looked when I found it, I wonder: Does one of them know all of this already? Does someone know more than he or she is letting on?”

Heather can’t help but place suspicion on everyone around her. This quote highlights the difficulty of reading others. Humans tend to look for signs in one another that demonstrate culpability or show their true feelings. However, our own projections and anxieties complicate reading one another’s behavior. Much of this novel is about misreading and misunderstanding ourselves and others.

“Coming here was the next best thing, you see. It was a way of escaping from life as I had known it, from everything that tied me to the past. Sometimes I think it’s a little like dying—a slightly more palatable option than the pills and the jump from the Forth Bridge that I had contemplated in the weeks after Jamie’s death. So in an odd way this landscape has been a sanctuary. But now, with this new horror and the falling snow trapping us in and keeping help out, it has become, in the space of twenty-four hours, a prison.”

In this passage, Foley portrays the setting of the Scottish Highlands as both a sanctuary and a prison. When things are going well, the Highlands wilderness provides a respite from the chaos and pain of society. However, when things are going badly, the Highlands are an oppressive environment that literally entraps the people there. That the people are there to escape oppression heightens the imprisonment of the wilderness. Ironically, people escape to the wilderness only to find the manifestation of their worst anxieties.

“The air is noticeably colder today. Some of the puddles of rainwater seem to have frozen overnight. There’s an edge, a rawness, to this cold that is unfamiliar. A chilly day in London is always offset by the warm blasts from overheated shops, the stickiness of the tube, the press of other bodies. But here the cold has a chance to get you properly in its grip. It feels a little like I’m trying to outrun it.”

The descriptions of the air as grippingly cold, as something to outrun, is a vivid and metaphorical piece of imagery. Miranda notices here how the Highlands, far from being a respite from busy London life, are a deeply chilling environment. She doesn’t feel at peace being in nature; she feels on edge. This tension foreshadows the murder and emphasizes the fearsome conflict of man versus nature.

“Normally, after a body has been found, I am sure it is all flashing lights, men in white hazmat suits, and commotion. But this is no ordinary place. And in this case the landscape has had its own ideas. The weather has forced us to bend to its own whims. I realize, for one of the first times since I moved here, quite how alien this place is, how little I really know of it. It might as well be another planet. I am certain that there are secrets here beyond the whiskey bothies, beyond the monster pike deep in the loch. Those are just the small things the landscape chooses to reveal.”

This passage emphasizes the powerlessness of humans versus nature. Society’s constructions of security and systems are meaningless against the forces of nature. In the battle between people and nature, nature will always win.

“There is a silence here that is different from the silence on the rest of the estate. It’s like a held breath. It feels—as clichéd as this might sound—as though we are not alone. As though something, someone, is watching us. The stones are like old bones: a skeleton of someone who has died and been left out in the open, denied the dignity of a burial. When we get near enough I am sure the air smells of burning. That’s impossible, isn’t it? Or could there be some way in which the smoke has gone deep within the stone, remained locked in there? It wouldn’t be hard to believe that the fire happened a few years ago, not nearly a century in the past.”

The remains of the former lodge symbolize danger and the violence that people are capable of committing against one another. The fire that destroyed the old lodge was set to kill others. The remains stand as a foreboding symbol of the mania that can set in when people are far from their society. It foreshadows more conflict within the new lodge, where the friends from London burn one another metaphorically.

“Now, of course, that’s all water under the bridge. Or, at least, Nick has done a good job of suggesting as much. I wonder, though, whether he still thinks of it. Wounds inflicted at that sort of raw, unformed time in our lives tend to cut the deepest—and leave the worst scars.”

Katie’s observation that “wounds inflicted at that […] unformed time […] tend to cut the deepest” is important in understanding the dynamics of the guests at the lodge. They come together as adults to resolidify their pasts—but those pasts are mired in pain. In their younger years, the friends weren’t always kind to each other, and time hasn’t healed those fractures.

“Oh God, and now I remember vomiting while Giles looked on, eyes on me the whole time, like he half wanted me to choke on it. When Julien appeared he just looked tired, vaguely disgusted. No: I wasn’t so drunk that I don’t remember that.”

Miranda is surrounded by friends but completely alone. This quote highlights that being a member of a large tribe doesn’t necessarily imply support, security, and safety. Miranda can’t depend on Giles, Julien, or Mark, each of whom treats her with his own version of disrespect. Despite being with people she has known for years, she isn’t emotionally safe and is therefore distanced from them even though they perceive her as the popular leader of the group.

“There was a strange tension between us. I think it was the knowledge of having known each other for ten years and yet suddenly being aware that we did not know each other at all. We were really little more than friendly strangers. We needed Miranda there to make sense of the connection between us.”

Foley explores the dynamics of groups of friends. Every pack needs a leader, which is the role Miranda plays. This passage highlights the separation between each person in Miranda’s friend group. They’ve all known each other for years, but only peripherally. This quote reveals how little natural connection the friends have with one another—and emphasizes Miranda’s role as the glue that holds the group together.

“Was that all it was? I ask myself, now. The real source of the excitement, beyond any chemistry, or physical attraction? The sheer disbelief that he wanted me, and not Miranda? Did I really envy her that much? Yes, a little voice says. Maybe I did.”

Katie’s attraction to Julien as a prize inspires her affair with him. Despite Katie’s initial characterization as mature and above pettiness, Foley reveals that her desires to one-up Miranda motivate her actions. This quote emphasizes the hurtful ways that people use one another to make themselves feel better.

“It feels, suddenly, like a secret that has been under my nose the whole time and which I’ve never stopped to see, so wrapped up have I been in my inner world, the long legacy of my grief. If I hadn’t been, would that guest have died? I push the thought away. It is not worth thinking about now.”

Heather turned to the Loch to escape her grief and find a new layer in herself. In discovering how much she’s turned away from the world, Heather indeed pulls herself out of her grief. This character development highlights Foley’s message about the importance of seeing and experiencing the world for what it is, rather than trying to escape it.

“I stare at him. If it weren’t so horrifying it might almost be fascinating, the change that has come over this man, who, from what I gleaned, seemed a simple, uncomplicated sort, if a bit taciturn. But then it isn’t a change, I realize. This is the real him. He’s just worn the other persona like a cloak.”

This passage embodies Foley’s larger message about how little we know other people. Foley explores how people tend to perceive one another in ways that fit their own projections of their selves onto the world. Here, Heather’s perception of Iain demonstrates this message. Rather than pay attention to Iain, Heather chose to keep him at a distance, thereby averting any deeper understanding of who he is. Although this is a defense mechanism against her own hurt, it ends up placing her in danger. This quote also highlights the “cloaks” that people wear to divert others from seeing their truths.

“Beyond the window the light in the sauna is still on. How could they have been so stupid? It’s almost like they wanted to be found. Perhaps they genuinely hadn’t appreciated how conspicuous it looks out there in the dark, like a lantern against the night. A beacon. I wonder—even though I know I shouldn’t think about it—what they’re doing, now. Are they discussing next steps, like co-conspirators? Have they even put their clothes back on? I can’t get that image out of my head: her paleness against the tan of his skin, their dark heads together. I take a gulp of the whiskey, letting it burn its path down my throat, focusing on the pain of it. But I’m not sure all the whiskey in the world will help me to forget how strangely, horribly beautiful they were together.”

The Hunting Party relies on juxtapositions between beauty and horror. The image of her best friend and her husband having sex in a hot tub is a bad one, and yet it has a certain beauty, according to Miranda. This highlights the thin line between beauty and ugliness. Furthermore, this passage is important because it adds another layer to Miranda’s otherwise one-dimensional character. Here, Miranda extends some compassion to others and reveals her own vulnerabilities.

“I read somewhere once that sales of lipsticks go up when times are tough. I pout at myself in the mirror. Never has “war paint” seemed like a more appropriate term. My face is pale, sunken-eyed, but the lipstick transforms it. It gives my face resolution, context, like a piece of punctuation. I try a smile, and quickly stop. I look deranged, like Heath Ledger’s Joker.”

In this novel, Foley explores the myriad ways people wear disguises to hide their true selves from the world around them. Here, Foley uses lipstick to symbolize Miranda’s mask of beauty and well-groomed confidence—and then immediately juxtaposes it with her true face, which is “sunken” by the sadder reality of her situation. The lipstick can’t change Miranda’s face because our masks can’t truly disguise our problems.

“Something magical happened. As Emma, I became someone new. It was acting, the same beautiful dislocation from myself that I had known on stage in a school production, when I briefly managed to become a different person entirely. Emma could be capable and cool, sexy, clever, but not too much so, not the kind of clever that scared people. She would be a social creature, she would be someone without layers, without darkness. She would be everything that I was not.”

The Hunting Party explores the disguises that people use to hide their real selves from the world around them. For Emma, disappearing behind a manufactured identity modeled after Miranda is an ultimate disguise to hide her lonely, obsessive self. Although sociopathy inspires Emma to take on this disguise, it’s still as indicative of self-versus-society as anybody else’s disguise. Emma doesn’t know how to navigate the world, so she uses other people’s personalities to do so.

“The papers compared it to the case of that other Oxford alumnus, a few years ago, who stabbed her boyfriend with a bread knife. People like them just don’t serve time. The defense, meanwhile, gleefully painted a picture of Miranda as an unhappy person: someone whose life was falling apart beneath a glossy facade. A big drinker. A drug taker—she, after all, had supplied our group with drugs on the first night of the holiday. Emma, importantly, had abstained from taking anything. And Miranda was prone to erratic, bullying behavior, the defense claimed: the way she’d forced Mark to drink that champagne, coerced me into the freezing loch. Controlling, manic, unstable—she’d been seeing a psychotherapist, hadn’t she?”

This passage is important because it emphasizes the issue of perception. Miranda didn’t deserve to die because she was mean, yet the narrative deems her reputation as a mean girl a sufficient defense for Emma’s actions. On the outside looking in, one can easily perceive Miranda’s actions as cruelty worthy of hatred. Still, the perception of Miranda as a mean girl prevents people from understanding her other layers or seeing Emma’s actions as lacking in personal responsibility. This illustrates the danger in misperceptions of people based on surface stories.