“The Most Dangerous Game”
By Richard Connell
Setting
The setting of the first part of the story was in the middle of the sea in a
moonless Caribbean night and moist black velvet skies where they talked about
an island in what sailors call a “Ship-Trap Island”. In the following scenes,
Rainsford found himself in the island after falling down from his yacht and in front
of a tall spiked iron gate in which she opened, letting him meet the most
prestigious Russian hunter ever. As the story proceeds, Rainsford was in the
jungle of the said island where he found himself running off from his hunter
during the day and hiding off from different places he could possibly hide in the
jungle during the night away from his hunter.
Character
General Zaroff is a Russian general who is an outstanding hunter and
established a game in which he called the biggest game on the island. He was
raised by his father tough and a virtue of a hunter with the influence of gun at the
age of five to shoot sparrows, earning a prize for shooting a turkey instead of a
punishment, and was complimented as an excellent marksman as he killed his
first bear in the Caucasus at the age of ten; he was also a military man who
commanded a division of Cossack cavalry. His greatest interest was to hunt as he
has hunted every kind of game in every land that would make it impossible for
him to tell how many animals he has killed in his lifetime. The hunter’s experience
made him look for more than just hunting mere animals, which led him to have an
ideal animal to hunt— it has courage, cunning, and it must be able to have a
reason.
Plot
The story started with Whitney and Rainsford talking about an island that is
uncanny for every human sailors and even pirates that instills great fear to them;
as they were about to sleep, Rainsford heard some fired gunshots and due to an
incident, he fell of from his yacht which led him to the island they named as “Ship-
Trap Island”. He remembered the gunshots again and swam towards the direction
he heard it from until he reached a flat place at the top thinking “If there are
gunshots, there are men, thus there is food” and found himself opening a tall
spiked iron gate thinking it was a mirage but wasn’t with the stone steps and the
knocker of the door where he was welcomed by a gigantic creature with a black
beard down to the waist and in his hand was a revolver pointing it straight to his
heart. After introducing himself as Sanger Rainsford of New York and asked for
food, he met General Zaroff where they talked about his life as a hunter and how
the island had the biggest game— the most dangerous one— and upon the
realization of Rainsford that the prey was not an animal but the one who is
courageous, cunning, and rational— a human. He later found himself running
away from his life and act as a prey for the greatest Russian hunter of all time; at
daytime he would be running around looking for a place to hide where the
General won’t find him and at nighttime during the hunt, he would be holding his
breath to hide away from the General but as expected, the General would always
find him and play games with him by letting him off the hook for another day’s
sport. Rainsford realized this and created a trap against the General which bruised
him on the shoulders as he took his flight again and came into the Death
Swamp— a quicksand that sucks of anything that moves within its boundaries—
and instead of getting out of the quicksand, he dug himself down and created a
pit in which he climbed out and covered it with rough carpet of weeds and
branches; the General was nowhere to be found until he heard a sharp scream of
pain from the General who was holding a light torch and said that the Burmese
tiger pit has claimed one of his best dogs. He thought of running away to save
himself but the baying hounds abruptly stopped together with his pursuers and
went back to the General by swimming which congratulated him for winning the
game.
Theme
“The Fear of a Prey to its Hunter and the Difference of Human Prey from an
Animal Prey.”
