The Thirty Nine Steps

The motif of nature reflects Hannay’s emotional progression through the novel. Early in the story, the beauty and peace of the Scottish landscape align with Hannay’s lighthearted embrace of his situation: “I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police” (26). For most of the early chapters in Scotland, Hannay expresses similar satisfaction with the sights, sounds, and hospitality that he finds across the moorlands. Even in Chapter 6, when he awakes after spending a night in the open, his primary complaint is of hunger, not discomfort from the elements. Though nature becomes less prominent when Hannay returns to London, Buchan continues to mention it. In Chapter 10, when Hannay is especially anxious, he finds a moment of peace: “Out in that dancing blue sea I took a cheerier view of things” (115). As with earlier instances, the positivity of this moment is signaled through the description of nature using positive attributes like “dancing.”

The longer Hannay is pursued, however, the more he feels challenged by the landscape. In Chapter 5, before he evades capture in the guise of the roadman, he feels the strain of being in the open: “The free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of a dungeon” (53).