Common Themes In Literature

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Two Common Themes, Between Different Works of Literature
Themes plays a very important part of any short story, poem, drama or any other kind of literary work and though each literary work may be different, there can be a common theme between them that can truly make the work great. One common theme in “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, “Batter my heart, three-personed God” by John Donne and the drama Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, is the fact that someone or something is searching for someone else and goes to fairly extreme measures to find them, as well as there being a change in a character. In, “The Most Dangerous Game”, Zaroff is searching for Rainsford in what Zaroff calls his game of hunting humans instead of animals. In “Batter …show more content…

Zaroff at having been successful at hunting every kind of animal has taken up the sport of hunting what he considers to be the best kind of game, “it must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason”(Connell 75). Zaroff is talking about humans. He considers them the best kind of game to hunt, because, they always do something different and are unpredictable in their actions whereas, real animals follow their instincts. Rainsford ends up playing Zaroff’s game of being hunted and if he outwits Zaroff, he will be taken back to the mainland. Rainsford reluctantly agrees to this and is hunted for three days by Zaroff. Rainsford does elude the general and does kill one of his hunting dogs, as well as his main henchman, Ivan, by means of a man catcher and knife. “General Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed”(Connell 84). As stated, one theme in this short story is the fact that someone is searching for someone else and goes to extreme measures to find them. Zaroff displays this by hunting down Rainsford and doing so for three whole days, as well as, losing his best man, Ivan, and a dog in the process, plus enduring the long

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