The Most Dangerous Game Summary & Review By: Dev Thaker

 The Most Dangerous Game Summary

By: Dev Thaker

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell is a thriller short story that revolves around the message that you should understand what taking life away really means. This story is touching for me as I believe that you should not a living thing’s life away. At the beginning of the story, Rainsford and his companion, Whitney, we on a yacht in Rio de Genaro. They aimed to land in different areas that are great for hunting. Whitney points out Ship-Trap Island in the distance. Both of them are big-game hunters bound for a hunting trip in the Amazon. When the ship sails through the darkness, they discuss whether their prey feels fear. Rainsford believes that the world consists only of predators and prey, however, he hears three gunshots in the distance in the night time. As a result, Rainsford drops his pipe and begins to lose balance. Thus, he falls into the water and attempts to swim towards the source of the gunshots. When he finally reaches to land, he decides to retire for the night.

The next morning, Rainsford begins to search for the mysterious location of the gunshots. While he was on his adventure, he finds a pool of blood as he infers that it was probably from the prey he was shot earlier. In this area, he also finds footprints of hunting boots. Thus, he realizes that someone lives on a deserted island. He follows the footprints as it leads him to a large estate with large doors. As he enters the estate, he is greeted by a tall man with a gun. He is then directed to General Zaroff, who is an evil general who is also ambitious in regards to hunting like Rainsford.

General Zaroff begins having a regular conversation with Rainsford as they later dine together. During this time, Rainsford later picks up that General Zaroff enjoys hunting animals. I believe that hunting humans are not the right action to perform because it is not good to sacrifices an innocent person’s life for a sense of happiness… General Zaroff invites Rainsford to hunt with him. However, Rainsford declines this opportunity in exhaustion. As a result, Rainsford wasn’t able to sleep for the whole night as he was knowing that he was going to get a rude awakening from General Zaroff and his assistant, Ivan.

On the next day, Rainsford learns that he has two choices: Either to become prey for General Zaroff or to fall into the violent hands of Ivan. He ended up becoming prey for General Zaroff, which led to a series of difficult situations. During this amazing “game”, Rainsford begins to place traps at places where Zaroff would potentially go towards. Whenever Zaroff was near Rainsford, Rainsford begins to panic as he was unable to trap his pursuer. These encounters occurred a few other times as the results were the same as the one previously depicted. At this point, I knew that Rainsford will never be able to kill General Zaroff. If he will ever get close to him, he will simply “chicken” out and run away. However, I was kind of wrong…

Rainsford dives off the edge of a cliff into the ocean. Due to this, Zaroff returns to his house and eats a filling meal. He eventually has the decision to go to sleep for the night. However, at the same time, he gets confronted by Rainsford, who was hiding behind the curtains of his bedroom. As a result, he challenges Zaroff to a final duel. Zaroff claims that the loser will be fed to the deadly dogs and the winner will be able to sleep in Zaroff’s bed. In the end, Rainsford beats Zaroff as he was later fed to the dogs.

I personally really enjoyed reading this book because it allowed me to take a look at things from different perspectives. At the beginning of the story, Rainsford believed that animals have no sort of feeling. When Whitney tried to explain to Rainsford how the animal would be if he were to hunt, he immediately shut down her thought.  However, by the end, he begins to appreciate the full understanding of what taking life away means. This becomes evident when Rainsford learns that Zaroff enjoys killing humans. To expand, when Rainsford was attempting to hide from Zaroff, he finally realized the feeling that animals get when they are being hunted.