The Most Dangerous Game

It is said that when soldiers go to war they have to turn off their moral switch in order to kill without hesitation, but how do you determine what is moral and what is not, and once the switch is off how do you turn it back on? In Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” Sanger Rainsford is a famous hunter who falls off his boat and ends up on Ship-Trap Island. He has no regard for the life of his animal prey until he, the predator, becomes the prey. Through Rainsford’s words and actions we see how his moral switch is turned off when he is forced to transform from a moral man into a heartless killer.

In the beginning of the story, Rainsford is on a boat talking with his friend, Whitney, about hunting. Whitney remarks that hunting is great for the hunter, not the jaguar. Rainsford says, “Who cares how a jaguar feels? They’ve no understanding. The world is made up of two classes- the hunters and the huntees” (Connell 10). This proves that Rainsford has no regard for the lives of the animals he hunts, and life is better when you’re the predator instead of the prey. After Rainsford falls off of the boat he swims to Ship-Trap Island where he meets Ivan and his master, General Zaroff. Zaroff explains to Rainsford that he is a hunter like him, but he hunts a different kind of animal. While in the Amazon, Zaroff realized that he had become bored with the game he hunted, so he had to invent a new animal. When Rainsford discovers that Zaroff hunts humans, he is appalled. He says, “Hunting? Good God, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder” (Connell 17). Zaroff tries to reason with him by reminding him that they have both had experiences in the war. He does this in order to justify what he has done and make it seem okay to hunt humans, and he wants Rainsford to participate in his “game.” Rainsford says, “My experiences in the war did not make me condone cold-blooded murder. I’m a hunter, not a murderer” (Connell 18). This shows that Rainsford may not care about the lives of animals, but he does care about the lives of humans. We can see that Rainsford is a man of good moral character by the way he responds to Zaroff’s proposition.

By force, Rainsford reluctantly agrees to play Zaroff’s “game.”