Becoming Zaroff's Prey In The Most Dangerous Game By Richard Connell

Predators and their prey are often thought of as opposites, however, they are more similar than most people think. Most animals are part of at least one food chain where they are both a predator and prey. This idea is further elaborated in the short story The Most Dangerous Game. Rainsford, a famous big-game hunter, finds himself trapped on an island where he learns that innocent people are being hunted for entertainment. He soon finds himself being hunted by General Zaroff, the owner of the island, because he refuses to “murder” humans. Becoming Zaroff’sthe General’s prey changes Rainsford's perspective that the animals he hunts have no understanding of fear. In The Most Dangerous Game, Richard Connell suggests that the hunter is not

At first, Rainsford related to and was even impressed by Zaroffthe general for his experience in hunting. HoweverTherefore, when Zaroff explained hishe was told of the General’s new choice in prey, Rainsford was so shocked andthat he was unable to think. However, he still instinctively felt that hunting humans was absurd. When talking to the general about hunting humans, the appalled Rainsford admits that he disagrees with this form of “Hunting? General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder”, but the general refused “to believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life”(101). Rainsford’s conversation with the General clearly resembles the previous conversation he had with Whitney, where General Zaroff values human life as little as Rainsford valued the jaguar’s life. This is a parallel conversation in which he unknowingly switches sides, disagreeing with his previous argument made in the first conversation. General Zaroff tries to persuade Rainsford to accompany him on a hunting day, but Rainsford continues to refuse claiming that the war “Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,”(101). In his first conversation with Whitney, Rainsford doesn’t seem to put any thought or regret into hunting animals as prey because he