The Most Dangerous Game Literary Analysis

​The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell is an action packed story that will put the types of conflict such as man vs man , man vs self and man vs nature into clear perspective. The story is set in the 1900s when an eager game hunter named Sanger Rainsford on his way to south America falls off his ship after saying how he doesn’t care about how the animals feels about being hunted that it’s just part of nature. When his cries for help don’t work he swims to a nearby island to try to stay alive. When he arrives he finds an Old Russian war general named Zaroff and his Russian guard named Cossack. Over dinner they chat and find they share something in common, hunting. There is one slight difference in their taste for the sport the general like to hunt humans and Rainsford might second guess his words about how the animals feel when he’s the animal.

When Rainsford talks about how he doesn’t care about how the animals feel when they are hunted it ends up coming back haunt to him when he has to make a choice hunt humans with Zaroff or be hunted. At this point he must make a choice which is giving him internal conflict or in this case it is man vs self. To become a cannibal or to be the hunted which he has said he doesn’t care for? He ends up making the decision to go as the prey. Connell uses internal conflict to grow our main characters feelings

The deal was if the general couldn’t catch and kill him in 3 days that he could leave and be dropped off in civilization. That meant that Rainsford would have to stay alive for 3 day and not get killed by the general or his dogs that he would use as an assist. So obesely this is man vs man the General is hunting Rainsford and is trying to kill him. The author in this part of the story uses the characters very intensely to grow the plot and mood of the story with tools such as foreshadowing an external conflict.

Now the setting of this story is on an island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Rainsford has a lot of experience hunting and he uses that to help him hide, but he needs to live in nature with a half insane general running around trying to kill him for 3 days. In this case the author uses the setting to add to the challenges of our main character. Not only making the story sound more realistic but giving us a more detailed picture with how the vines hang, rock shapes, paths, swamps and other natural features that are important to the story.

In the beginning of the story Rainsford is against the idea of hunting humans but, after the general goes home and he thinks Rainsford is dead he and he end up not being dead as walks in to the room and kills the general. This is a great example of irony he risked his life because he didn’t want to kill a human but at the end of the story he still ends up killing one.

Thought the story the author uses wonderful examples of literary tools to make a great short story. One of the big factors in this story is the external conflicts and they not only affect the main character but everything in the story. This goes to show that literary tools are huge part to making a well arranged story.

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