The Hunting Party

One entertainment for guests at Loch Corrin is stag-stalking—the hunting of deer or stags. This helps the estate manage the deer population and gives wealthy guests a taste of wilderness adventure. Stags factor into the novel symbolically from the very beginning. On their way to the Loch, Doug’s car is abruptly stopped by a deer in the street. The deer pauses and stares down the guests in the car, one of their first challenges by nature. In that case, the deer symbolizes the unwelcome intrusion of society on nature. Then, during the stag-stalking, Emma proves herself to be a careful and astute hunter. She stealthily kills a deer that the group later eats for dinner. This symbolizes Emma’s obsessively sneaky nature; it parallels Emma’s hunting of Miranda. The novel highlights the importance of this symbol through the mysterious and problematic practice of hunting.

The wilderness is both a setting and a symbolic state of mind in The Hunting Party. The New Year’s Eve guests are sorely out of place in the Scottish Highlands. At Loch Corrin, they’re isolated from the familiar comforts of London to which they’re accustomed. They go to Loch Corrin in a symbolic gesture of escaping society’s pressure, only to find that all their secrets and resentments echo back to them in the vastness of the wilderness.