Context
Richard Edward Connell was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 17, 1893. His father served in the House of Representatives for approximately one year before his death in October 1912. Precocious and verbal, Connell had a knack for writing since childhood and had become an editor for his local newspaper, the Poughkeepsie News-Press, by age sixteen. He served as his father’s secretary and congressional aide while attending Georgetown but left Washington, D.C., after only a year to fight in Europe during World War I. He enrolled at Harvard University upon returning to the United States, editing both the Harvard Lampoon and Harvard Crimson.
Connell turned to freelance writing in 1919 and began a prolific period that spanned more than three decades. From his home in Beverly Hills, California, he published four novels, four collections of short stories, numerous Hollywood screenplays, and many articles for local newspapers. Critics quickly recognized him as a new master of short fiction, and his stories frequently appeared in Collier’s Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post as well as foreign publications. He published more than 300 short stories during the course of his lifetime, including the well known “A Friend of Napoleon,” “Big Lord Fauntleroy,” “Hero of the Devil’s Kitchen,” and “Ssssssshhh.” His short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” first published in 1924, proved to be his greatest success and won him the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Award. He continued to write short stories until his death from a heart attack in 1949.
Adventurous and suspenseful, “The Most Dangerous Game” struck a chord with readers far and wide. Integrating elements of both popular and literary fiction, Connell’s story provides fast-paced escapism and a menacing, Gothic atmosphere of mystery, horror, and the grotesque. Hollywood produced a silver-screen adaptation of the story eight years after its initial publication, pitting Rainsford and a shipwrecked brother-and-sister duo against the evil General Zaroff. The early “talkie” B-film’s crisp pace, strong performances, and breathless suspense made it an instant classic. The story was twice adapted into popular radio dramas in the early to mid-1940s, the first starring Orson Welles as General Zaroff and the second starring Joseph Cotten as Rainsford. The human-hunting-humans scenario in “The Most Dangerous Game” has since inspired countless other films, television episodes, and novels, all trying to recapture the heart-pounding terror of Connell’s original story.
Richard Edward Connell was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 17, 1893. His father served in the House of Representatives for approximately one year before his death in October 1912. Precocious and verbal, Connell had a knack for writing since childhood and had become an editor for his local newspaper, the Poughkeepsie News-Press, by age sixteen. He served as his father’s secretary and congressional aide while attending Georgetown but left Washington, D.C., after only a year to fight in Europe during World War I. He enrolled at Harvard University upon returning to the United States, editing both the Harvard Lampoon and Harvard Crimson.
Connell turned to freelance writing in 1919 and began a prolific period that spanned more than three decades. From his home in Beverly Hills, California, he published four novels, four collections of short stories, numerous Hollywood screenplays, and many articles for local newspapers. Critics quickly recognized him as a new master of short fiction, and his stories frequently appeared in Collier’s Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post as well as foreign publications. He published more than 300 short stories during the course of his lifetime, including the well known “A Friend of Napoleon,” “Big Lord Fauntleroy,” “Hero of the Devil’s Kitchen,” and “Ssssssshhh.” His short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” first published in 1924, proved to be his greatest success and won him the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Award. He continued to write short stories until his death from a heart attack in 1949.
Adventurous and suspenseful, “The Most Dangerous Game” struck a chord with readers far and wide. Integrating elements of both popular and literary fiction, Connell’s story provides fast-paced escapism and a menacing, Gothic atmosphere of mystery, horror, and the grotesque. Hollywood produced a silver-screen adaptation of the story eight years after its initial publication, pitting Rainsford and a shipwrecked brother-and-sister duo against the evil General Zaroff. The early “talkie” B-film’s crisp pace, strong performances, and breathless suspense made it an instant classic. The story was twice adapted into popular radio dramas in the early to mid-1940s, the first starring Orson Welles as General Zaroff and the second starring Joseph Cotten as Rainsford. The human-hunting-humans scenario in “The Most Dangerous Game” has since inspired countless other films, television episodes, and novels, all trying to recapture the heart-pounding terror of Connell’s original story.
Plot Overview
On a yacht bound for Rio de Janeiro, a passenger named Whitney points out Ship-Trap Island in the distance, a place that sailors dread and avoid. He and his friend Rainsford are big-game hunters bound for a hunting trip in the Amazon River basin. As the yacht sails through the darkness, the two men discuss whether their prey actually feels fear. Rainsford believes that the world consists only of predators and prey, although Whitney is not as certain. Noticing the jitteriness of the crew, Whitney wants to sail past the mysterious island as soon as possible. He theorizes that sailors can sense danger and that evil emanates in waves like light and sound.
Whitney then decides to turn in for the night, but Rainsford opts to smoke his pipe on the afterdeck for a while. Suddenly, he hears three gunshots in the distance and moves toward the railing of the deck to investigate. Hoisting himself onto the rail to try and get a better look, Rainsford drops his pipe, loses his balance in an attempt to catch it, and accidentally plunges into the water. His cries for help go unanswered, and the yacht quickly disappears into the night.
Rainsford decides to swim in the gunshots’ direction. He hears the screeching sound of an animal in agony and heads straight for it, until the cries end abruptly with a pistol shot. Exhausted, Rainsford reaches the rocky shore and immediately falls into a deep sleep. He wakes the next afternoon and sets off in search of food, forced to skirt the thick growth of the jungle and walk along the shore. He soon comes to a bloody, torn-up patch of vegetation where a large animal had thrashed about. He finds an empty rifle cartridge nearby.
He follows the hunter’s footprints in the growing darkness and eventually comes upon a palatial chateau at the edge of a precipice that drops steeply into the rocky ocean below. At first, Rainsford thinks the chateau is a mirage, until he opens the iron gate and knocks on the door. Ivan, a burly man with a gun, answers and refuses to help Rainsford until another man, General Zaroff, appears from inside the chateau and invites Rainsford inside.
Zaroff greets Rainsford warmly and has Ivan show him to a room where he can dress for dinner. The huge, lavish dining hall features numerous stuffed and mounted heads, trophies that Zaroff has brought back from his many hunting adventures around the world. As the two men eat borscht, a red Russian soup made of beets, Rainsford praises his host’s specimens, remarking on how dangerous it can be to hunt Cape buffalo. Zaroff states that he now hunts far more dangerous game on his island. He recounts past hunts, from his childhood in the Crimea to hunting big game around the world, but goes on to describe how the sport eventually became too easy.
Zaroff hints, however, that he has found a new kind of animal to hunt, one with courage, cunning, and reason. Rainsford’s initial confusion turns to horror as he slowly realizes that the general now hunts human beings. Zaroff doesn’t understand Rainsford’s indignation but promises that his outrage will subside once he’s begun the hunt. Rainsford declines Zaroff’s invitation to join in the hunt that night and goes to bed. After a fitful night of insomnia and light dozing, the sound of a distant pistol shot awakens him in the early morning.
General Zaroff reappears at the chateau at lunchtime, sad that hunting humans no longer satisfies him. He laments that the sailors he lures to the island present less and less of a challenge. Rainsford demands to leave the island at once, but the general refuses and forces Rainsford to be his new prey in the next hunt, hoping that Rainsford, as a renowned big-game hunter, will provide the challenge he seeks. Zaroff promises to set Rainsford free if he lives through the next three days. Rainsford sets off into the jungle after receiving food, clothes, and a knife from Ivan. He cuts a complicated, twisting path through the undergrowth to confuse Zaroff and then climbs a tree to wait as darkness approaches.
Zaroff finds Rainsford easily but lets him escape to prolong the pleasure of the hunt. Unsettled that Zaroff found him so quickly, Rainsford runs to another part of the jungle and makes a booby-trap called a Malayan mancatcher to kill Zaroff. The trap only wounds Zaroff, who returns to the chateau and promises to kill Rainsford the following night.
Characters
Rainsford runs for hours until he mistakenly steps into a bed of quicksand. He manages to wrest free, then digs a pit in the soft mud a few feet in front of the quicksand. He lines the bottom of the pit with sharp wooden stakes, covers it with foliage, and then hides in the brush nearby. One of Zaroff’s hunting hounds springs the trap and plunges to his death, forcing Zaroff to return to the chateau again. At daybreak, Rainsford hears the baying of the hounds and spots Zaroff and Ivan with a small pack of hunting dogs in the distance. Rainsford fashions another trap by tying his knife to a sapling.
The trap kills Ivan, but the hounds push on, cornering Rainsford at the edge of a cliff. Instead of facing the dogs, Rainsford jumps into the rocky sea below. Stunned and disappointed, Zaroff returns to his chateau. As he turns on his bedroom light, he is shocked to find Rainsford concealed in the curtains of the bed. Before they fight, Zaroff states that the dogs will eat one of them that night while the other will sleep in the comfortable bed. Rainsford later concludes that he has never slept in a more comfortable bed.
Themes
Reason versus Instinct
Pitting Rainsford and General Zaroff against each other in the hunt allows Connell to blur the line between hunter and prey, human and animal, to suggest that instinct and reason are not as mutually exclusive as people have traditionally thought. Writers and philosophers have traditionally placed human intellect and the ability to reason above the bestial instincts of wild animals, which have no moral compulsions and act solely to satisfy their own needs. Reason, therefore, transforms mere animals into people and allows them to live together in functioning societies. Connell first blurs the dichotomy between reason and instinct through Rainsford’s friend Whitney, who asserts that animals instinctively feel fear and then confesses that Captain Neilson’s description of Ship-Trap Island has given him the chills. Without realizing it, Whitney admits that his perception of the island has sparked a sense of dread in him, just as perceived danger induces fear in an animal.
Connell further turns the table on the idea that reason exists apart from instinct by reducing the gentleman hunter Rainsford to the role of prey in General Zaroff’s sadistic hunt. Rainsford comes to realize that all creatures, including people, rely on fear and their instinct to survive to avoid pain and death, just as Whitney had originally argued. Nevertheless, Rainsford remains calm in spite of his fear and works methodically to evade death and even defeat Zaroff. Despite his desire to kill his pursuers, however, Rainsford keeps his perspective and continues to value human life, therefore remaining more man than beast. In contrast, the genteel General Zaroff reveals himself to be more animal than human by rationally concluding that people are no different from other living creatures and by ruthlessly hunting men to satisfy his inner bloodlust. Zaroff’s and Rainsford’s cool rationality and calculating cunning throughout the entire hunt belies the fact that each man acts only according to instinct, one to survive and the other to kill.
The Effects of War Although Rainsford and Zaroff have similar backgrounds and are both wealthy hunters, they have radically different interpretations of their wartime experiences. Zaroff tells Rainsford about his days slumming in the Russian army, a brief dalliance commanding a Cossack cavalry division that ultimately distracted him from his love of the hunt. He nevertheless conveniently retains the title of general in a nod to his thirst for power over other individuals’ lives. Connell also suggests that Zaroff’s martial experiences altered him and allowed him to think of other people as worthy prey. The general’s inflated ego, disdain for humanity, and sadistic thrill at inflicting suffering all stem from seeing life through the sights of a rifle. Zaroff finds Rainsford’s outrage naïve, primly Victorian, and overly puritan. Rainsford, however, remembers the grueling, harrowing aspects of warfare. He recalls desperately digging trenches with insufficient tools while on the European frontlines in World War I. The sense of desperation and powerlessness that his war years instilled in him revisit him during his three-day trial on the island.
Motifs The Color Red The color red permeates the story to highlight the blood, violence, and death on Ship-Trap Island. In the beginning of the story, for example, Rainsford falls off his yacht into the “blood-warm waters” of the sea, symbolically marking him as a target of future violence. Upon reaching the shore, he discovers a crushed patch of weeds “stained crimson.” As Rainsford moves deeper into the interior of the island, the color red becomes more directly linked with the bloodlust of General Zaroff, from the crimson sash his body guard, Ivan, wears to the steaming bowls of red borscht he serves Rainsford. Connell refers to the general’s “red-lipped” smile twice, at one point extending the description to include a flash of Zaroff’s pointed, fanglike teeth. Connell focuses less on the color red as soon as the hunt begins to emphasize Rainsford’s level-headedness and foreshadow his ultimate triumph over Zaroff.
Darkness The darkness that shrouds Ship-Trap Island accentuates the shadowy recesses that lie beyond the reach of logic and reason. As Whitney and Rainsford converse on the deck of the yacht in the opening passages, the moonless sultry night surrounds them with its “moist black velvet.” Disoriented and isolated after falling overboard, Rainsford swims in the direction of the gunshots, the first of many such times on the island when he must rely on other senses to navigate the pitch-blackness that surrounds him. The darkness that envelops the island not only instills foreboding terror, but it also hints at the dementia that has lead Zaroff to hunt people. Interestingly, Connell contrasts this darkness with false beacons of light that draw unsuspecting victims to the island like moths to a flame. Rainsford, for example, heads toward the “glaring golden light” of Zaroff’s chateau soon after awaking on the island. Similarly, the electric lights lining the channel to Ship-Trap Island appear to warn passing ships of the treacherous shoals and rocks, but they actually shipwreck more sailors for Zaroff to hunt. As a result, these false beacons only make the prevailing darkness more penetrating and foreboding.
Symbols The Jungle Teeming, wild, and ungovernable, the jungle serves as a powerful symbol of Zaroff’s tangled psyche and the chaos within the island. The “snarled and ragged” growth shrouds the island, concealing Zaroff’s grotesque hunt from the rest of the world. The jungle is also an emblem of restriction and Rainsford’s loss of control because it impedes his effort to return to civilization. The morning he awakens on the island’s shore, for example, he can see no way through the tangled of trees and undergrowth before him. During the hunt, claustrophobia overtakes him as Zaroff closes in for the kill. Ultimately, Rainsford must free himself from this thorny physical and mental space and does so by rejecting the jungle altogether in favor of the sea.
The Island Ship-Trap Island symbolizes a similarly uncharted region where the laws governing normal human discourse don’t exist. Here, General Zaroff’s plays out his homicidal whims unchecked, unimpeded, and a world apart from Rainsford’s comfortable life of privilege and ease. In many ways, the island is an antiutopian society under the rule of a tyrant seeking to exterminate other people instead of sustaining them. The autocratic Zaroff, without any compassion or regard for human life, exerts absolute control over everything. Isolated, the island is a realm of wild, uncontrollable, and unspeakable desires recklessly pursued without any sense of morality. Subject to legend and superstition, the island is an unconscious embodiment of fear, abstract and impalpable, just like the chill and shudder that Whitney feels as the yacht first sails by.
Sanger Rainsford - A world-renowned big-game hunter and the story’s protagonist. Intelligent, experienced, and level-headed, Rainsford uses his wits and physical prowess to outwit General Zaroff. His understanding of civilization and the relationship between hunter and prey is radically transformed during his harrowing days on the island. Hiding from Zaroff, he recalls his days fighting in the trenches of World War I, where he witnessed unimaginable violence. At the same time, the three-day chase reverses his life of privilege and ease, forcing him to sacrifice comfort and luxury to survive. Read an in-depth analysis of Sanger Rainsford.
General Zaroff - A Russian Cossack and expatriate who lives on Ship-Trap Island and enjoys hunting men. General Zaroff’s high cheekbones, sharply defined nose, and pointed military mustache accentuate his mysteriousness and savagery. With a cultivated voice and deliberate, slightly accented way of speaking, his regal bearing and rarefied aristocratic air belie his dementia and sadism. He hunts human beings to experience the most satisfying thrill. Read an in-depth analysis of General Zaroff.
Whitney - Rainsford’s friend and traveling companion. On the yacht, Whitney suggests to Rainsford that hunted animals feel fear. Highly suggestible, Whitney feels anxious as they sail near the mysterious Ship-Trap Island. He argues that evil emanates in waves like light and sound. Ivan - A Cossack and Zaroff’s mute assistant. A man of formidable physical stature, Ivan has a waist-length black beard and wears a black uniform. All of Zaroff’s captives prefer to flee from Zaroff as prey rather than suffer torture and certain death at Ivan’s hands.
Reason versus Instinct
Pitting Rainsford and General Zaroff against each other in the hunt allows Connell to blur the line between hunter and prey, human and animal, to suggest that instinct and reason are not as mutually exclusive as people have traditionally thought. Writers and philosophers have traditionally placed human intellect and the ability to reason above the bestial instincts of wild animals, which have no moral compulsions and act solely to satisfy their own needs. Reason, therefore, transforms mere animals into people and allows them to live together in functioning societies. Connell first blurs the dichotomy between reason and instinct through Rainsford’s friend Whitney, who asserts that animals instinctively feel fear and then confesses that Captain Neilson’s description of Ship-Trap Island has given him the chills. Without realizing it, Whitney admits that his perception of the island has sparked a sense of dread in him, just as perceived danger induces fear in an animal.
Connell further turns the table on the idea that reason exists apart from instinct by reducing the gentleman hunter Rainsford to the role of prey in General Zaroff’s sadistic hunt. Rainsford comes to realize that all creatures, including people, rely on fear and their instinct to survive to avoid pain and death, just as Whitney had originally argued. Nevertheless, Rainsford remains calm in spite of his fear and works methodically to evade death and even defeat Zaroff. Despite his desire to kill his pursuers, however, Rainsford keeps his perspective and continues to value human life, therefore remaining more man than beast. In contrast, the genteel General Zaroff reveals himself to be more animal than human by rationally concluding that people are no different from other living creatures and by ruthlessly hunting men to satisfy his inner bloodlust. Zaroff’s and Rainsford’s cool rationality and calculating cunning throughout the entire hunt belies the fact that each man acts only according to instinct, one to survive and the other to kill.
The Effects of War Although Rainsford and Zaroff have similar backgrounds and are both wealthy hunters, they have radically different interpretations of their wartime experiences. Zaroff tells Rainsford about his days slumming in the Russian army, a brief dalliance commanding a Cossack cavalry division that ultimately distracted him from his love of the hunt. He nevertheless conveniently retains the title of general in a nod to his thirst for power over other individuals’ lives. Connell also suggests that Zaroff’s martial experiences altered him and allowed him to think of other people as worthy prey. The general’s inflated ego, disdain for humanity, and sadistic thrill at inflicting suffering all stem from seeing life through the sights of a rifle. Zaroff finds Rainsford’s outrage naïve, primly Victorian, and overly puritan. Rainsford, however, remembers the grueling, harrowing aspects of warfare. He recalls desperately digging trenches with insufficient tools while on the European frontlines in World War I. The sense of desperation and powerlessness that his war years instilled in him revisit him during his three-day trial on the island.
Motifs The Color Red The color red permeates the story to highlight the blood, violence, and death on Ship-Trap Island. In the beginning of the story, for example, Rainsford falls off his yacht into the “blood-warm waters” of the sea, symbolically marking him as a target of future violence. Upon reaching the shore, he discovers a crushed patch of weeds “stained crimson.” As Rainsford moves deeper into the interior of the island, the color red becomes more directly linked with the bloodlust of General Zaroff, from the crimson sash his body guard, Ivan, wears to the steaming bowls of red borscht he serves Rainsford. Connell refers to the general’s “red-lipped” smile twice, at one point extending the description to include a flash of Zaroff’s pointed, fanglike teeth. Connell focuses less on the color red as soon as the hunt begins to emphasize Rainsford’s level-headedness and foreshadow his ultimate triumph over Zaroff.
Darkness The darkness that shrouds Ship-Trap Island accentuates the shadowy recesses that lie beyond the reach of logic and reason. As Whitney and Rainsford converse on the deck of the yacht in the opening passages, the moonless sultry night surrounds them with its “moist black velvet.” Disoriented and isolated after falling overboard, Rainsford swims in the direction of the gunshots, the first of many such times on the island when he must rely on other senses to navigate the pitch-blackness that surrounds him. The darkness that envelops the island not only instills foreboding terror, but it also hints at the dementia that has lead Zaroff to hunt people. Interestingly, Connell contrasts this darkness with false beacons of light that draw unsuspecting victims to the island like moths to a flame. Rainsford, for example, heads toward the “glaring golden light” of Zaroff’s chateau soon after awaking on the island. Similarly, the electric lights lining the channel to Ship-Trap Island appear to warn passing ships of the treacherous shoals and rocks, but they actually shipwreck more sailors for Zaroff to hunt. As a result, these false beacons only make the prevailing darkness more penetrating and foreboding.
Symbols The Jungle Teeming, wild, and ungovernable, the jungle serves as a powerful symbol of Zaroff’s tangled psyche and the chaos within the island. The “snarled and ragged” growth shrouds the island, concealing Zaroff’s grotesque hunt from the rest of the world. The jungle is also an emblem of restriction and Rainsford’s loss of control because it impedes his effort to return to civilization. The morning he awakens on the island’s shore, for example, he can see no way through the tangled of trees and undergrowth before him. During the hunt, claustrophobia overtakes him as Zaroff closes in for the kill. Ultimately, Rainsford must free himself from this thorny physical and mental space and does so by rejecting the jungle altogether in favor of the sea.
The Island Ship-Trap Island symbolizes a similarly uncharted region where the laws governing normal human discourse don’t exist. Here, General Zaroff’s plays out his homicidal whims unchecked, unimpeded, and a world apart from Rainsford’s comfortable life of privilege and ease. In many ways, the island is an antiutopian society under the rule of a tyrant seeking to exterminate other people instead of sustaining them. The autocratic Zaroff, without any compassion or regard for human life, exerts absolute control over everything. Isolated, the island is a realm of wild, uncontrollable, and unspeakable desires recklessly pursued without any sense of morality. Subject to legend and superstition, the island is an unconscious embodiment of fear, abstract and impalpable, just like the chill and shudder that Whitney feels as the yacht first sails by.
Sanger Rainsford - A world-renowned big-game hunter and the story’s protagonist. Intelligent, experienced, and level-headed, Rainsford uses his wits and physical prowess to outwit General Zaroff. His understanding of civilization and the relationship between hunter and prey is radically transformed during his harrowing days on the island. Hiding from Zaroff, he recalls his days fighting in the trenches of World War I, where he witnessed unimaginable violence. At the same time, the three-day chase reverses his life of privilege and ease, forcing him to sacrifice comfort and luxury to survive. Read an in-depth analysis of Sanger Rainsford.
General Zaroff - A Russian Cossack and expatriate who lives on Ship-Trap Island and enjoys hunting men. General Zaroff’s high cheekbones, sharply defined nose, and pointed military mustache accentuate his mysteriousness and savagery. With a cultivated voice and deliberate, slightly accented way of speaking, his regal bearing and rarefied aristocratic air belie his dementia and sadism. He hunts human beings to experience the most satisfying thrill. Read an in-depth analysis of General Zaroff.
Whitney - Rainsford’s friend and traveling companion. On the yacht, Whitney suggests to Rainsford that hunted animals feel fear. Highly suggestible, Whitney feels anxious as they sail near the mysterious Ship-Trap Island. He argues that evil emanates in waves like light and sound. Ivan - A Cossack and Zaroff’s mute assistant. A man of formidable physical stature, Ivan has a waist-length black beard and wears a black uniform. All of Zaroff’s captives prefer to flee from Zaroff as prey rather than suffer torture and certain death at Ivan’s hands.