The Most Dangerous Game
Meet the Writer
Famous for One Story
By the time he dreamed up Rainsford’s
epic battle of wills with General Zaroff,
Richard Connell (1893–1949) was already
a seasoned writer, accustomed to seeing
his work in print. He began writing early: As
a ten-year-old cub reporter, he covered
local baseball games for the newspaper his
father edited in Poughkeepsie, New York.
During his student days at Harvard, Connell
wrote for both the college newspaper
and The Harvard Lampoon, the school’s
famous humor magazine. He went on to
write hundreds of short stories, as well as
novels and screenplays.
Richard Connell
Richard Connell
Despite Connell’s tremendous output, only one story—
“The Most Dangerous Game” (1924)—is still widely read.
The story has not only fascinated readers for decades but
has also intrigued filmmakers. This suspenseful tale has
inspired four movies in the past seventy years. What
accounts for the story’s enduring popularity?
Nothing in it is especially believable—not the characters, not the plot, not even the
violence. We are never really afraid that Rainsford will be chewed up by one of
those hounds. Perhaps the answer is that “The Most Dangerous Game” is an
adventure story, with all the appeal of a Hollywood scare-o-rama, complete with
an elegant villain, his huge brute of a manservant, a castle, a dark jungle,
bloodthirsty animals, and hideous mantraps. It is a fine example of a macho
escape story. When we read it, we escape reality for a short time. We spend an
hour or two away from real life and its problems.
Despite its literary flaws, people rarely forget this story.
Elements of Gothic Fiction
Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of
literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a
genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English
author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The
effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension
of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of
Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were
other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.
Horace Walpole
Gothic Fiction
The stock characters of Gothic
fiction
include tyrants, villains, bandits,
maniacs, Byronic
heroes, persecuted
maidens, femmes
fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen,
magicians, vampires, werewolve
s, monsters, demons, dragons,
angels, fallen angels,
revenants, ghosts, perambulatin
g skeletons, the Wandering
Jew and the Devil himself.
Gothic Fiction
Prominent features of
Gothic fiction include
terror (both psychological
and physical), mystery,
the supernatural, ghosts,
haunted
houses and Gothic
architecture, castles,
darkness, death, decay, d
oubles, madness, secrets,
and hereditary curses.
The Most Dangerous Game
by Richard Connell
"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.
"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the
jaguar."—”The Most Dangerous Game
Indicate to what degree you agree
with the following statements.
Always
•
•
•
•
Never
I believe that it is alright to hunt and kill animals for food.
I believe it is alright to hunt and kill animals just for sport.
I believe that murder is wrong in every instance.
I believe that murder is wrong when my life is in danger
or when someone is wising me harm.
• I believe that is alright to have fun even when someone
else gets hurt.
• I believe that all is fair in love and war.
• I believe that animals have feelings such as fear
The Most Dangerous Game
Write your response to one of these questions
in your reading logs…
Essential questions: