✍️Main Answer
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
✍️Extra Information
⏩What mood is Connell trying to establish in the opening pages of the story? Identify words and phrases the author uses to establish this mood. Connell is trying to create a mood of unease, uncertainty, and evil.❗
⏩Once the game begins, the author creates suspense through putting Rainsford in explicit danger and through Zaroff's looming threat. The final and largest way is through creating a sequence that builds, one with a timeline. Rainsford is trying to reach the third day. The general is trying to stop him.
Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building-- a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.
The general filled both glasses, and said: "God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger, my father said My whole life has been one prolonged hunt."❗
⏩What is the moral of the story in the most dangerous game?
The central moral theme of the story involves the distinction between murder and hunting. Rainsford sees a clear difference between the two, hence his disgust at Zaroff's hunting of men. Zaroff, on the other hand, sees his pastime as similar to a war.❗
⏩The Most Dangerous Game Symbols
• Blood and the Color Red. In “The Most Dangerous Game,” references to blood and red imagery are used as a warning of coming dangers and to reinforce an atmosphere of violence and death. ...
• The Island. ...
• Zaroff's Mansion.❗
