The Most Dangerous Game

Big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford and his friend, Whitney, are traveling to the Amazon rainforest for a jaguar hunt. After a discussion about how they are "the hunters" instead of "the hunted," Whitney goes to bed and Rainsford hears gunshots. He climbs onto the yacht's rail and accidentally falls overboard, swimming to Ship-Trap Island, which is notorious for shipwrecks. On the island, he finds a palatial chateau inhabited by two Cossacks: the owner, General Zaroff, and his gigantic deaf-mute servant, Ivan.[8]

Zaroff, another big-game hunter, knows of Rainsford from his published account of hunting snow leopards in Tibet. Over dinner, he explains that hunting animals has become boring for him, so he moved to Ship-Trap and set it up to trick ships into wrecking themselves on the jagged rocks that surround it. He takes the survivors captive and hunts them for sport, giving them food, clothing, a knife, and a three-hour head start, and using only a small-caliber pistol for himself. Any captives who can elude Zaroff, Ivan, and a pack of hunting dogs for three days are set free. He reveals that he has won every hunt to date. Captives are offered a choice between being hunted or turned over to Ivan, who once served as official knouter for The Great White Czar. Rainsford denounces the hunt as barbarism, but Zaroff replies by claiming that "life is for the strong." Realizing he has no way out, Rainsford reluctantly agrees to be hunted.

During his head start, Rainsford lays an intricate trail in the forest and then climbs a tree. Zaroff finds him easily, but decides to play with him like a cat would a mouse, standing underneath the tree Rainsford is hiding in, smoking a cigarette, and then abruptly departing. After the failed attempt at eluding Zaroff, Rainsford builds a Malay man-catcher, a weighted log attached to a trigger. This contraption injures Zaroff's shoulder, causing him to return home for the night, but he shouts his respect for the trap before departing. The next day Rainsford creates a Burmese tiger pit, which kills one of Zaroff's hounds. He sacrifices his knife and ties it to a sapling to make another trap, which kills Ivan when he stumbles into it. To escape Zaroff and his approaching hounds, Rainsford dives off a cliff into the sea; Zaroff, disappointed at Rainsford's apparent suicide, returns home. Zaroff smokes a pipe by his fireplace, but two issues keep him from peace of mind: the difficulty of replacing Ivan, and the uncertainty of whether Rainsford perished in his dive.

Zaroff locks himself in his bedroom and turns on the lights, only to find Rainsford waiting for him; he had swum around the island in order to sneak into the chateau without the dogs finding him. Zaroff congratulates him on winning the "game," but Rainsford decides to fight him, saying he is still a beast-at-bay and that the original hunt is not over. Accepting the challenge, Zaroff says that the loser will be fed to the dogs, while the winner will sleep in his bed. The story ends with Rainsford enjoying the comfort of Zaroff's bed.

"The Most Dangerous Game" is a popular read within middle and high school curricula due to the strength of the themes within the story. The first and foremost question that the story bears is that of justifiable murder. Rainsford justifies his hunting of animals because he believes that man is superior to animals because animals do not feel. To contradict, General Zaroff believes that men are superior because they are able to reason. Zaroff uses his reasoning to explain why men are the most interesting game to hunt; men can reason, and thus provide a challenge that no animal can contend with. The story simultaneously highlights through the experience of Rainsford, as he is hunted, the fears that animals must experience while being hunted.

Zaroff himself is a contradiction because his exquisite manners are juxtaposed with his heartless brutality in killing men. The idea of a man who is proper in all aspects, but still contains a desire to kill, is a suggestion by Connell that men possess murderous instincts that can only be subdued by the presence of society and law. Zaroff is only able to partake in his "hobby" because he does not live within a civilization.

The ending of the story bears questions about the true nature of Rainsford, who is implied to have killed Zaroff in order to secure his own safety. By killing Zaroff, he thus took part in the "game" that Zaroff wanted him to play.[9]

Robert Hansen, a serial killer who was active in the early 1980s, would kidnap women and release them in Alaska's Knik River Valley. He would then hunt them, armed with a knife and a Ruger Mini-14 rifle.[10][11] A 2013 American crime drama film The Frozen Ground starring John Cusack and Nicolas Cage is based on this case.[12] Hansen was arrested and imprisoned for life where he died of an undisclosed illness.

In 1976, Hayes Noel, Bob Gurnsey, and Charles Gaines discussed Gaines's recent trip to Africa and his experiences hunting African buffalo. Inspired in part by "The Most Dangerous Game", they created paintball in 1981—a game where they would stalk and hunt each other—to recreate the same adrenaline rush from hunting animals.[13]

There is a reference to "The Most Dangerous Game" in letters the Zodiac Killer wrote to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in his three-part cipher: "Man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill."[14] The Most Dangerous Game film is also mentioned a number of times in the context of the Zodiac Killer in the 2007 film, Zodiac.[15]

• Senn, Bryan (2013). The Most Dangerous Cinema: People Hunting People on Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 9781476613574.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Most Dangerous Game

• "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell at Duke of Definition: English on the Web
• "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell at The Fresh Reads