“The Most Dangerous Game” initiates by introducing a hunter by the name of Sanger Rainsford. As Mr. Rainsford gets stranded on the Island of Ship Trap Island, owned by a Cossack by the name of General Zaroff, he discovers a game that he dares not play. As General Zaroff eases Rainsford into his “more dangerous game” (8), Rainsford “[wished] to leave this island at once” (15). After many hints he realizes that the biggest game had to be humans, which were brought in by the great seas or hashes of light leading to humongous rocks.
After Rainsford denies Zaroff’s offer to hunt, Zaroff tells Rainsford that “the hoice rests entirely with [him]” (15). He can either choose to hunt or get knouted by Ivan, his assistant. The first day of Rainsford’s hunt he cheats death as he hides high up in a tree while Zaroff, knowing his prey was there, decides to light a “pungent incense-like cigarette” (17). He puffs the smoke right up the tree as if he were saying he would leave him for another day.
For survival he decided that he cannot lose his nerve. At this moment he sees a “huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one” (18). Once he causes an injury to the body of his predator, the predator goes crazy trying to find him. As Rainsford rests in a tree for a couple of seconds, after a tiresome chase, he hears the “shore of the sea” (21) as it “rumbled and hissed” (21). He is able to make it back to the chateau and hide in the General’s room.
Once he comes out from his hiding spot Zaroff proposes a deal. The person that wins the fight would lay in the “very excellent bed” (22). Rainsford decided that “he had never slept in a better bed” (22). “When [he] was only five years old he gave me a little gun” (Connell 9) said Zaroff indicating that his dream started at a young age. This statement led me to believe that the General as a man with a lot of determination.
At first the thought I had on Richard Connell wanted to have the same determination as he gave his character, but my mind then wiped that thought as I read that he “began reporting on baseball games when he was only ten years old” (Glencoe 20). When both of these men were only young boys they decided what it was that they both wanted to pursue. As I read “The Most Dangerous Game”, I could see how he initially made his story plot. Richard Connell, “born on October 17th in 1893 in Dutchess County, New York” (Mangold) wrote a book based on “Sanger Rainsford of New York” (Connell ).
In “Richard Connell- Biography”, you read that “over the next 10 years ConnellI [publishes] three books” and in the story as Rainsford is greeted by General Zaroff he states that he has “read [his] book about hunting snow leopards”(Connell 6). Just as the general introduces himself as “General Zaroff” (Connell 6) implying that at one point he enlisted into fighting in some sort of a war, you can make a connection to “Richard Connell- Biography” as “Connell decided to enlist” (Mangold).
As I began to go into deep thought I noticed that Connell could not only balance “working at the newspaper, he wrote an ditorial” (Glencoe 20) all at the same time, in the same way that Zaroff “read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian” (Connell 7); they both made time to do what they loved to do. Throughout the story you can see pieces of the author’s personality being expressed in both, Sanger Rainsford and General Zaroff. Knouting is the action of hitting an object with a heavy scourge- like multiple whip which is usually made by rawhide.
The way it is being described does not even compare to how lethal this weapon actually could be in the hands of a villain. As I hought that knouting was only used in books and movies, though once we read the 1895 article we realize this was a real punishment which cause a real problem. The article informs the reader of cases that never actually reached the house of justice but were used “for the punishment of offenses” (Arbor). You can understand the unfairness brought unto “peasants” (Arbor).
The peasants that had to suffer from this offense were the ones working in the mines. If this was the punishment they were to receive then they would be hit out in public. This punishment later moved into Siberia. Once the peasants were there they ould be put in chains, that after two and a half years later made permanent marks on those who came out alive. One of the things described that this knouter could do, and would sometimes do, was break the ribs causing the heart to almost tear out of the skin.
You can also catch yourself being described the plet. The plet was a little less deadly by being able to kill at the fifth lash instead of the third like the regular knout. This version of the knout would rip off the skin from the bottom of neck to the bottom of one’s back by three pieces. After reading the article I had a better understanding of the actual pain this eapon could bring upon any of its victim. In “The Most Dangerous Game” you will read about a man named Ivan who “once had the honor of serving as official knouter” (13).
Once I read this line I went back to think about “The Russian Knout”, an article written in 1895, in which the author stated that “one never knows for certain how much of the knout is left in modern Russia”. This punishment was said to be “left in modern Russia” (The Russian Knout). If the sailors in the short story did not want to hunt Zaroff would “turn [them] over to Ivan” (Connell 13). With the assistance of an “official nouter” (13), “a man under a sentence of 100 lashes might die at the third” (The Russian Knout).
In Russia there are people called cossacks which is the word General Zaroff decides to use as he talks about Ivan. As he states that “[Ivan] is a cossack” (Connell 6) and “so is [he]” (6). As the article goes on it tells you that they tried “abolishing the use of the knout for the punishment” as if we wouldn’t think that there would still be some type of physical punishment. This thinking reminds of how Zaroff lets Rainsford know that he “gives him his option” (Connell 13) thinking that he is putting his mind at ease.
Though many people, a long time ago, had “statistics… submitted” (The Russian Knout) to the Czar, nothing changed. The peasants were never given their right case but they had people who enjoyed bringing pain unto others decide the amount of lashes being thrown at their body. It just so happened that instead of the statistics being submitted to the “local judges” (The Russian Knout) they get submitted to the same place that General Zaroff calls the “Great White Czar” (Connell 13). There are so many similarities that deal with something that occurred thirty years prior.