A World Class Hunter In Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game

In Richard Connell’s short story ‘’The Most Dangerous Game,” a world class hunter and author Sanger Rainsford finds himself running from a psychotic general on a secluded tropical island. Rainsford has to not only run for his life, but mortally fight back to survive a deadly game of hunt or be hunted. Theme of the story is role reversal, which forces Rainsford to change over the course of the story. In fact, Rainsford’s perception of hunting and of the animal's feelings reverse completely. He realizes that his idea of what animals felt like was wrong in its entirely, and through understanding what it is like to be hunted, he becomes less ignorant and naive.

The story begins when Rainsford was talking about how he doesn't care about how the preys he hunts feel. “ Who cares how a jaguar feels.” (p.17) This shows us that he is the hunter and his prey is the hunter. He falls from his ship and swims to “ Ship Trap Island’’ where he runs into the owner of the island, General Zaroff. Zaroff has the same philosophy as Rainsford classifying the world into classes, the hunter and the huntees. Zaroff and Rainsford are alike because they both classify themselves as the hunters and the preys as huntees. They are both similar but unlike Zaroff Rainsford is not a murderer.

He discovers what it is like to be running for one's life. This is role reversal because he is now hunted opposed to being the hunted. The antagonist in the story plays the most dangerous game with Rainsford. Rainsford is so scared and experiments how his preys feel when he hunts them. Since Rainsford is a world class hunter, he is a a great match for Zaroff who is a excellent hunter himself. This makes the game a lot more intense. While rainsford is running for his life he uses every trick he knows to defeat Zaroff. He uses the burmese tiger pit, knife tied to sapling, malay man hunter and fooled Zaroff he died and hid behind his curtain then he snuck up on him killed