...The diction and imagery in Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” agitate the reader and create a sympathetic mood, which allows the reader to experience Rainsford’s perspective as a “huntee.” The reader is pulled into Rainsford’s perspective first with descriptions of his “desperate, hopeless flight [through the woods], that carrie[s] him on for several hours” (77). The words “desperate” and “hopeless” have strong connotations of suffering and despair, which evoke sympathy from the reader. Coupled with the visual imagery of Rainsford’s “flight,” this sentence is a strong foundation for the mood that will continue to build as Zaroff pursues Rainsford. The detailed descriptions of Rainsford’s battle against Zaroff show the reader that in...
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...The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell 1. Sanger Rainsford- A big-game hunter who has survived numerous near death experiences such as fighting on the frontlines in World War 1 to hunting unique and skilled animals in some of the most remote and enticing places in the world. General Zaroff- Zaroff has been a prominent hunter since his childhood. His first experience was learning to shoot a gun, and using it to kill his father’s prized turkeys. Later in his life, he commanded cavalrymen in Russia, and this helped him familiarize himself with the horrors of warfare. This experience made him accustomed to death and making him lose the ability to distinguish humans from beasts. Now he has bought an island and uses it to fulfill his hunting...
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...Rainsford’s Change A change that a character goes through can be positive or negative depending on the circumstance given. A transformation in attitude or actions indicate a difference in character. The protagonist, Rainsford, in The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, progressively transforms from a critical hunter to a human hunter, developed from his desire for survival. Rainsford is very critical and thick-skulled when it comes to hunting. For instance, he expresses no care towards animals and Whitney by saying that, “You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels.” (pg.19) This statement reveals that Rainsford has no sympathy when hunting down animals; as long as he wins against the enemy, that’s all that matters. Since Rainsford does not know what it feels like to be...
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...Many stories attempt to answer the million dollar question: is killing right? High Noon by Carl Foreman is one such screenplay: Will Kane, a retired marshal, is getting married, but just as he and his wife leave to start a new life together, he receives news that the murderer he convicted, Frank Miller is back--Frank Miller, the town terroriser who would now be aiming for Kane's head. Another story which is centered around the protagonist's conflict with killing is Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, where Rainsford, a big-game hunter, gets stranded on a mostly deserted island and is forced to play a "game" with General Zaroff--the game being three days of evading getting hunted by the general for sport. Although the conflicts of...
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...In the story “The Most Dangerous Game”, Rainsford’s ability to hunt, set up traps to kill Zaroff, and ultimately killing Zaroff, produced the fact of Rainsford becoming a human-hunter and losing his humanity. First of all, Rainsford was already a hunter before he went to the island, this leads his ability to hunt. When Rainsford and Whitney are talking at the beginning of the story, Whitney says to Rainsford, “I’ve see you pick off a moose moving in the brown bush at four hundred yards.” This proves that Rainsford can hunt as shown by his ability to hit a moose from 400 yards. Therefore, Rainsford can hunt humans as he can hunt animals very well. Second of all, Rainsford sets traps trying to kill the general throughout the story showing...
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...In the story “The Most Dangerous Game” Zaroff decides that hunting animals has gotten boring. Zaroff then decided he’d rather hunt something that is a little more challenging. The only thing more challenging would be… people. As Rainsford and Zaroff where talking, they agreed that hunting was each other’s passion. Rainsford noticed that Zaroff had many animals throughout his house. As they were talking about hunting Zaroff mentioned that hunting animals was getting boring. Then and there is where Rainsford felt uneasy. If Zaroff’s passion was to hunt and he said it was getting boring, what does that mean? Then, he told Rainsford that he’d rather hunt something smarter, something with more intelligent. What could...
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...Did the general fail to see him, or “Rainsford’s second thought was even more terrible. It sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?” The general leaves him for another day of pleasure at the expense of Rainsford and he is terrified by the skills of the man. Needing to rethink his angle knowing that he cannot just hope to hide and wait out the sadistic hunter he starts to build traps. First a Malay man-catcher which grazes the general’s shoulder causing him to retreat and get his wound dressed. At this point the suspense is apparent to the unsuspecting reader caught by the notion of what could happen next. Rainsford makes his way out further into the jungle to an area of softer ground. The next trap claimed one of the general’s...
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...General Zaroff Character Analysis In “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, General Zaroff is shown as insane, cool, and as a savage. Zaroff is shown to be insane in the story when he says he got bored of killing animals so he kills humans.’’My dear fellow, there is one who can.’’ said the general. “But you can’t mean--” gasped Rainsford. “And why not?” asked the general (Connell 69). This quote shows that Zaroff is insane because during this part, he confesses he kills people for sport. During the story, Rainsford is also Cool because he lives on his own island with a mansion and a buttler. He shows that he is cool when his butler answers the door for Zaroff and then he comes down his stairs and introduces himself and Ivan. The...
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...thinking about an animal until he fingers out what the animal is “Hunting? Good God, ...[what you] speak ...is murder”( Connell 27). After all the General is a big game hunter but after he hunted every animal he got bored, but now since Rainford land on the island, the general will what to play a game of hide and seek with a bonus point of killing, and since he won then the game may have been influenced Rainford on using the same game for the next people that come to the island. But, Rainsford is a “ hunter, not a murderer” unlike General Zaroff (Connell 27). When Rainford and the general we're talking about the game Rainsford thought that they were a strange animal on the island but it turned out they were going to kill each other or hunt each other but, Rainford is a hunter he wants to hunt animals not his own people....
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...Thomas Wolfe is a about a religious, talented Negro named Dick Prosser who served in the army and is the servant of a middle class family in the south. This story takes a shocking turn when Dick goes on a killing spree throughout the town and a mob finally reaches him and kills him with no remorse. In Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game”, Sanger Rainsford falls off of a yacht that was heading towards the Amazon for a hunting trip. He swims to an island where he finds himself being the hunted by General Zaroff an aristocrat who had dominated the sport of hunting to the point that he became so bored, he purchased the island to specifically hunt men. None of these men survived his game. That is until Rainsford has no choice but to also participate in this game. At some point of each story, the animalistic act of man hunting man is witnessed. In “The Child by Tiger” Wolfe demonstrates that no matter how strong a person may be mentally, a human will sooner or later have a breaking point. The author in this story may also be trying to make the reader understand how society or environment a person is surrounded by may sometimes lead an individual to commit such horrendous acts of violence. Dick Prosser is seen as a gentle person who suddenly goes through a rampage killing several men....
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...Additional characters in the motion picture contrast greatly from the narrative. The supplementary characters in the motion picture was a brother, Martin, and his sister, Eve, who stayed with the protagonist Rainsford at Zaroff’s chateau. Adding on to these extra characters, their role in the movie change how Rainsford finds out about Zaroff’s true intentions. From the book, General Zaroff tells Rainsford directly that he plans to hunt him, which differs from him being caught in Zaroff’s “trophy room.” These events lead to Rainsford discovering Martin to be dead; the result of him being hunted. Moreover, the resolution of the cinema was also in great deviance. Rainsford decided to stay and sleep at Zaroff’s residence after personally killing him at the ending of the short story while he escapes with Eve after Zaroff falls to his death from his window in the conclusion of the screenplay. Beyond that, the overall theme changed from the novel to the film version. The reader is left with a decision after reading The Most Dangerous Game on what Rainsford decided to do after killing Zaroff. He could have stayed and became the murder he vowed to never become or leave the island and return to his normal life. The two mentioned dissimilarities are common for directors to use because additional characters or a whole new resolution can completely change the makeup of a literary...
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...“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and “The Destructors” by Graham Green. By comparison and contrast, it is found that Trevor and General Zaroff possess different temperaments and behavioral traits, and yet have many similarities in method, background, and morality. Both villains are motivated by boredom and a need to express their superiority. Many parallels can be drawn from “The Most Dangerous Game” byRichard Connell and “The Destructors” by Graham Greene, especially between Trevor and General Zaroff. Both of them are flat characters and both are the villains of the stories in which they reside. Trevor is the protagonist of “The Destructors” and General Zaroff is the antagonist of “The Most Dangerous Game.” Trevor and General Zaroff posses different temperaments and behavioral traits, and yet have many similarities in method, background, and morality. Both villains are motivated by boredom and a need to express their superiority. General Zaroff is an older, white-haired gentleman who is affable, hospitable, and good natured, while Trevor is a young gang member who is brooding and silent. General Zaroff is a hunter, and as such is a man of action – he enjoys the chase, the hunt. The boy prefers to sit quietly while planning and scheming. Trevor does not show even “the smallest flicker of glee” (Greene, 1954), while Zaroff openly shows his amusement with the game by smiling when he finds Rainsford in a tree, and by verbally stating his pleasure (Connell, n.d.). When...
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...I choose this image of a cat chasing a mouse because in the story, The saying, a cat playing with its prey, comes up many times. When Zaroff is hunting Rainsford, he finds Rainsford in the woods multiple times, but he heads back to the chateau. Rainsford soon realizes why Zaroff does this. He does this to keep the game going, he is the cat playing with it’s prey. Zaroff’s red smile symbolized many things within the story. In the text, it says he smiles with his red lips and his pointed teeth are revealed. This gives the reader a vivid image of Zaroff and that his intentions are not well. The reader can infer that there is something more sinister behind this man. This image represents Zaroff’s hounds. They’re green eyes described in the...
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...Hunter versus the Hunted Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and Tobias Wolff’s “Hunters in the Snow” are fictional short stories that share a common theme of the hunter versus the hunted. In “The Most Dangerous Game,” Sanger Rainsford, an avid big game hunter, finds himself trapped on an unforgiving hideaway known as Ship-Trap Island. Meanwhile, in “Hunters in the Snow” a group of young men venture into the wilderness for the thrill of killing a wild animal. In both stories, the protagonists are portrayed as the hunted, as the hunters, and finally, as the victors. Rainsford has seen war, had numerous near death experiences with wild animals and continues to engage in the sport for the love of hunting. He and his shipmates are off to...
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...One instance is "Then he felt a sudden impulse to cry aloud with joy for he heard the sharp crackle of branches as the cover of the pit gave way; he heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark" (page 19). This shows that his statement of him being a hunter not a murderer isn't entirely true. At the end of the story he does commit murder when he pushes General Zaroff out the window. Rainsford begins to associate with his prey when he says "it was then that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror"( page 17). Earlier in the story, Rainsford claimed not to care for his preys feelings, but now he knows how the prey feels. Also as the tables turn Rainsford begins to act more like a "huntie" as he calls his prey. As the story progresses Rainsford begins to show more empathy for...
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