The Most Dangerous Game, Good and Evil

"The Most Dangerous Game"

Richard Connell, 1924

"Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true, but the truth was as evident as the sun that had by now pushed through the morning mists. The general was playing with him! The general was saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror." -page 13

"The Most Dangerous Game" seems as straightforward a message of irony as it was in high school.  Almost painfully straightforward is the twist at the center of the story.  Rainsford, who dismisses even the thought of prey having any sense of awareness becomes the prey himself.  The conversation at the beginning is designed to foreshadow the irony to come.  Whitney attempts to make a humanitarian case to Rainsford, claiming that jaguars at least sense fear.  Rainsford states that the world is simply divided into hunters and huntees, and they are lucky to be the latter.  Of course, when the General turns the tables on Rainsford he gets his cumuffins!  In the quote above, Rainsford experiences the fear that prey truly experience when one is being hunted.

That being said, Rainsford is not completely wrong in his original statement.  Literally speaking, a brain operating at a less higher order will experience less fear, and a born predator is programmed to feel aggression far before something such as human terror.  This however, is besides the point.

The theme of this story seems to point towards good and evil.  Rainsford only truly changes his mind when confronted with a more drastic version of himself.  The General specifically references how Rainsford is younger than him, almost implying that someday they could come to be of the same mind.  They are both professional hunters and veterans, and aside from the finer points of the General's ideology, their personalities also seem compatible.  That being said, how far was Rainsford along the path to "evil" when the flaws in his own thinking were pointed out?  We can assume upon his return home that he quit hunting, hunted less, or at least considered the feelings of the creatures he killed.  The General, referenced to be "the devil" himself, attempts to corrupt Rainsford into hunting mankind, only to fail and hunt Rainsford himself.  It's possible given time, Rainsford would've succumbed to the powers of the General, and compromised his own moral compass.  However, Rainsford's travel to this otherworldly place, inhabited by the devil and his minions, seems to correct his own morality and thinking.  In this way, this classic story's theme of "good prevailing" sends us all the message to be kinder, more considerate people.