The Most Dangerous Game (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Edward Connell
- First Published: 1924
- Type of Plot: Adventure
- Time of Work: The mid-1920's
- Setting: “Ship-Trap Island,” in the Caribbean
- Principal Characters: Sanger Rainsord, General Zaroff, Ivan
- Genres: Short fiction, Adventure
- Subjects: Murder or homicide, Victims, Ethics, Human behavior, Hunting or hunters, Animals
- Locales: Caribbean, Islands
The Story
The title immediately introduces the ironic implications of the story. The word “game,” in a tale about two hunters, signifies both the competitive nature of their sport and the victims of it. The most dangerous game is one in which the lives of the hunter and the hunted are equally at risk, and this occurs only when both are men. Rainsford presumes that hunting is a sport involving no more moral consequences than a game such as baseball; he further demonstrates his naïveté by assuming that his victims, big-game animals, have no feelings. These two beliefs,...
[The entire page is 1351 words long]
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