What Is Rainsford Civilized

Charles Baudelaire once said “ True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.” However what is civilized? Civilized is specified by reasonable laws or rules about how people behave with one another. To this, I’ll be showing evidences from the story about how Zaroff considered himself civilized, Rainsford considered Zaroff civilized, and Rainsford considered himself civilized.

First is Zaroff, the antagonist in this story. He was raised in a wealthy family who started hunting at an early young age. As he got older, he loses the interest of hunting so he started hunting men as a challenge. Zaroff is highly confident in his hunting skill that he even considered himself as the God who can take out someone’s life as he pleases. One evidence that shows how Zaroff considers himself civilized is on page forty-four where he describes his servant Ivan as “like all his race, a bit of a savage.” Therefore from his point of view he sees Ivan as a canine undomesticated , while he himself is more like a human being.

He is a talented hunter who was going to hunt an exotic animal with his friend Whitney on the island called Ship-Trap Island. In the beginning of the story, he had no sympathy towards animal that he hunted simply because he believed that the world is made up of two classes; the hunters and the huntees. Nonetheless this change after he met Zaroff finding a way to survive. One evidence that shows how Rainsford considers Zaroff civilized is when Rainsford says to Zaroff on page forty-five “The table appointments were of the finest- the linen, the crystal, the silver, the china.” The explanation for this quote is that Rainsford was bewildered by all of the fancy elements on Zaroff’s table demonstrating that he had wealth and seemed