Rainsford Argumentative Essay

Rainsford is Alert. He demonstrated this in the beginning of the game when he first went into the forest, he tried to put as much distance between himself and the general as possible so it would be harder for Zaroff to find and kill him. “His first whole idea was to put as much distance between himself and General Zaroff (p.26)” Secondly Rainsford is intelligent because he had made various footprints going in multiple different directions,

In the short story The Most Dangerous Game, the author Richard Connell shows that Rainsford needs control of his emotions, patience , and expert hunting and decision making skills in order to defeat Zaroff. Rainsford needs to gain control of his emotions to outthink Zaroff, who symbolizes Rainsfords "steep hill". When he finds that he is going to be hunted his natural instinct is to run and panic, but then he stops to look around and get a grip on the task at hand. Then at a critical moment when Zaroff finds him in a tree, Rainsford panics again because he realizes Zaroff is on his trail and is toying with him. Once again, he gains control of his emotions and formulates a plan.

He is now not a hunter, but the hunted. He must now face the struggle of trying to hide, run, and defend himself from getting killed from Zaroff. But what Zaroff dosen`t know , is that Rainsford is a lot smarter than

Rainsford has the difficulty to make himself continue on in the hunt while in a state of fear and fighting in the external conflict of the jungle around him. In the resolution of the main conflict, Rainsford exemplifies Connell’s central idea in that he kills Zaroff out of a survival instinct and not from a standpoint of

One obstacle that was frustrating for Rainsford was that at the very beginning of the story, Rainsford wanted to leave the island so he would not have to face the dangerous game. Unfortunately, he could not escape the island, which led him to have to face extremely difficult obstacles that were in the dangerous game Zaroff made. Rainsford states that he “wish[es] to leave [the island]” (Connell 30). When the general hears this news, he tells Rainsford “you’ve only just come, you’ve had no hunting” and Rainsford is not allowed to exit the island unless he suffers through the game and survives (Connell 30). The fact that he has no choice to leave or not, he has to be forced to participate in the game and be chased down; which creates an external conflict for Rainsford throughout the whole story.

In the jungle, Rainsford knows that he must think outside the box. General Zaroff has already read all of Rainsford’s books

Also, General Zaroff is an extreme hunter and doesn’t find pleasure in hunting regular animals. Zaroff says the most dangerous game is humans because they have the ability to reason. Rainsford is going to be hunted and is given a certain amount of time to survive. Moreover, while Rainsford is being hunted Zaroff

He had to fight himself to stay on track. He was so scared in the jungle while the General was trying to hunt him. On page 186, it says “He could not say where he was. That was suicide.” This shows the reader that Rainsford may be thinking of what could go wrong, and is not thinking on the positive side of things.

We learn this from watching all of the traps he lays for Zaroff during the hunt. Even Zaroff is impressed with how he kept coming up with more and more clever tricks. We see this in the beginning of the story when Connell shows us how clever Rainsford is and how he reacts to danger,as well as what skills he has. These are some examples,”Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail” (Connell 69).”When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon”(Connell 70).These quotes show that Rainsford can be defined as quick and intelligent .His quick movement to the rail illustrates his nimbleness,while his knowledge of the position of the sun giving him a time period illustrates his

Rainsford disagrees with Zaroff, he thinks that his irrational explanation is not good enough to explain why he’s taking human lives for fun. Minutes later, Zaroff talks about war, he compares it to murder. The General tells Rainsford that he “‘surely [has] experienc[ed]...war,’” Rainsford cuts him off,

Zaroff was a tough man but not tough enough to beat Rainsford. Rainsford was mad fun of by Zaroff and had always wanted to prove him wrong and that night of the battle he did prove him wrong. Rainsford knew there was going to be traps so he prepared himself for the obstacles. Rainsford knew there was going to be traps. There were three taps.

Rainsford, in this situation, displayed a smile to show he wasn't the enemy nor was he fearful. Not only does Rainsford survive the gunman and the great fall from the cliff, but he shows the great audacity to go before Zaroff and return to finish the fight. Rainsford is a survivor. Furthermore this shows a change is Rainsford's paradigm from the parts of the story where he believes animals have no

Richard Connell both illustrated and demonstrated how both characters revealed their character traits of being, quick-witted, smart, clever, and malicious.   In the beginning of “The Most Dangerous Game” Rainsford falls off a yacht and finds himself in a human hunting game where he is the one being hunted. Throughout this event in the story it begins to show how Rainsford had to use his brain to outsmart the general if he wanted to survive. Also while this event was taking place it demonstrated to the reader that General Zaroff was a vindictive, cruel, and smart person through his decisions he made.

It is now hard for him to trust anyone after being forced to be hunted. “The pit grew deeper; when it was above his shoulders, he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he planted in the bottom of the pit with the points sticking up” (Connell 34) because of this flashback Rainsford starts to get scared about himself hurting another human being. He won’t hunt again because he remembers his times of desperation and how he felt while trying to kill a living person. Another factor of Rainsford’s nervousness is when he told that the man being hunted the day before lost his head.

Firstly, when Rainsford is given the chance to play General Zaroff’s game, he declines but changes his mind when General Zaroff states, “You will find my idea of sport more diverting than Ivan's” (Connell). This is the first sign Rainsford shows that he wants to survive. Rainsford knows that he doesn’t have a chance of survival if he declines General Zaroff’s game and plays Ivan’s instead. However, if Rainsford plays Zaroff’s game, he knows that he has a chance to survive even though the chance is very slim. Furthermore, after Rainsford had found a huge dead tree leaning against a smaller living one, he got to work with his knife and hid behind a log after he completed his task.