Bible Human Nature

One of the darker actions examined in this unit takes place in "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell. In this short story, General Zaroff begins hunting a man lost on his island named Rainsford. Bored of the usual game, General Zaroff decides he wants something more exciting and chooses to prey on humans. This ill-judged decision has a domino effect on the plot, ultimately ending in the demise of Zaroff. Nonetheless, an alternate ending besides death could have very well been a possibility. Perhaps, instead of hunting humans, Zaroff decides to open a hunting camp to share his passion for the sport with others. Obviously, his boredom is caused by the island's isolation from society. So, Zaroff could have built homes and started a community or decide to leave the island altogether. Then, the course of this story would have taken a completely different path. Maybe, Zaroff finds a wife, they have children and live happily ever after. If only he was able to overcome his dark side instead of letting it consume him.

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I will be comparing the video verion of The Most Dangerous Game to the story.

In a plenitude of literary pieces, writers present readers with villains, often to challenge the ethics of protagonists, and orchestrate the plot’s complication, in turn, heightening suspense. Correspondingly, in the self-enthralling tale of an expedition gone awry titled, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, the writer accentuates on an individual named Rainsford, who after stumbling off a yacht to Rio de Janeiro, swims ashore to an area called “Ship-Trap Island”, only to come face to face with the antagonist of the story, General Zaroff. The general derives appeasement in partaking in a callous game as hunting innocent humans and soon forces Rainsford to engage in such an activity. Furthermore, Frank Stockton’s acclaimed short story,

There are survivors all around us, and they all could have faced grave challenges to be standing where they are today. Rainsford, in the "Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, faced intense challenges in a "fight to the death" conflict against one of his most successful supporters, General Zaroff. Lee, from "My escape from North Korea" by Hyeonseo Lee, faced tough challenges while trying to escape the depths of a country that treated her horrendously. Aron Ralston, from "Trapped", a story explaining that Aron himself was hiking alone when the unthinkable happened: Two large, heavy boulders fell on his arm and he had to endure over a hundred painful hours of being trapped in between the two rocks until he did a self-amputation on the arm

In the short story by Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game, Sanger Rainsford finds himself in a sticky situation when he meets General Zaroff. General Zaroff is a very talented hunter and had become tired of hunting the same old animals as always, they bored him as he explained in the story, he had now moved on to the best prey he could find, a prey that could fight and think for themselves, and that prey was humans. Rainsford is taken aback by this confession and is alarmed, he asks Zaroff to let him go, but Zaroff has other plans. In order for Rainsford to get off the island alive he must survive three full days on the island while being hunted by General Zaroff. Rainsford agrees, knowing that if declines this choice his life would have a much more unpleasant future. And so the the hunt began, but Rainsford had some tricks up his sleeve.

One of the many things that has been highly controversial and still is to this very day is how to properly punish and treat criminals. Here in America we now have the Eighth Amendment to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. This was based off of a Parliament Act of 1689 that created England’s Bill of Rights. Before England had come up with the idea that humans should have guaranteed basic rights, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not a criminal would die, as much as it was a matter of how they would die. Torture devices such as the guillotine, the stake, the brazen bull, and the rack were used to spread the idea of fear and punishment that was ineffectually used by leaders to try and control their people throughout the history of Europe.

In the story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and the poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning, the authors use characterization and imagery to convey that the desire for power can drive man to psychotic actions.

It had been a week since Rainsford managed to kill the nefarious General Zaroff. The challenging part was almost over or so it seemed. There was not a clear way for Rainsford to escape. As days passed, Rainsford tried to escape. He tried making a boat from driftwood that he found, he tried swimming, he even tried sending a signal by using a flashlight. Rainsford had become so desperate that he even tried some ridiculous plans like trying to pole vault across the ocean. As a result, Rainsford ended up having huge gashes in his left leg ,which got infected, and he had to amputate it. As days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, Rainsford had lost hope and became bitter.

Resourcefulness is being able to overcome difficulties quickly and in a clever way. Resourcefulness can also be using one’s surroundings for his/her benefit with prior knowledge and experience. In Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” the main character Rainsford shows these skills of resourcefulness as he tries to survive the hunt. Rainsford is an experienced big game hunter that is trapped on a tropical jungle covered island with another big game hunter, General Zaroff. Zaroff has gained so much experience in hunting, due to this he has lost interest in hunting animals and now enjoys the hunt of humans. Rainsford is put in the position to be torched or participate in a game of hunting. When Rainsford is challenged to this game of hunting he is forced to try and survive. Rainsford is able to survive the hunt because he uses his resources and prior knowledge to weaken Zaroff helping him win the hunt.

How would it feel to suddenly go from being the hunter to becoming the prey? That is exactly what happened to Rainsford, one of the main characters in The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. Rainsford was a big game hunter who accidentally fell of of his yacht. He swam to a nearby island, and there he met General Zaroff, a cruel man who hunts humans for sport. In exchange for release from the island, Rainsford agrees to be hunted by Zaroff. Consequently, Rainsford is a survivor because he kills Zaroff and wins the game. Rainsford is also a survivor because he demonstrates the qualities that a person must have to be considered a survivor. Although Rainsford is a survivor, Zaroff is not. To be considered a survivor, a person must go through a traumatic or life-threatening experience but still demonstrate resilience and determination.

Is it possible to step into a character’s shoes and feel the same way about a conflict a character is experiencing? Well if you dont think so , the connections between literature and life is as close as it will get. In my opinion, the most deep connections with a character are created at night, for example I enjoy reading in the dark on my bed, especially if I’m reading a mystery it creates that suspense that makes reading fun. Literature and Life are connected through characterization , conflict , and narration because us as humans can make connections with a conflict a character is experiencing in a story. Forman indirectly characterizes meg by giving examples of meg’s actions and her thoughts.

Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" is a very exciting story of a manhunt. This story made me think about the morality of hunting: Humans are the cleverest creatures on earth, but does it give them a license to kill the other animals and even human beings weaker than themselves? I give below a short summary of the story to set the scene and then I will explore the ethics involved in hunting as a sport. "The Most Dangerous Game" presents the story of a hunter, General Zaroff, who finds hunting human beings as the most dangerous and fascinating sport.

This is the problem of evil. Augustine summed it up most effectively when he said, “Either God cannot abolish evil or he will not. If he cannot then he is not all-powerful. If he will not then he is not all good.” Augustine viewed evil as merely the absence of good just as dark is the absence of light, a non-being “a name for nothing but the want of good”. He looked to the Bible for an explanation for the existence of God and believed that the fall of humanity from grace, as shown in Genesis, showed the origin of evil. He believed that evil came into the world because human beings had deliberately turned away from God and his goodness. This suggests that both moral and natural evil is a result of original human sin.

In Genesis the word of God leads humanity in the direction of self preservation, urging them to procreate, to ”Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:1), and to minimize hostility and violence among people. As Freud asserted, “Besides the instinct to preserve living substance and join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and bring them back to their primeval, inorganic state” (Freud 77). Genesis exemplifies the struggle between the two opposing human instincts, with God acting as a moderator between them. Forms of justice are put into place in an attempt to control these drives, one example being the proclamation that “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). The ethics and laws that develop throughout Genesis seek to “prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence” but are unable to control “the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness” (Freud 70). Since they cannot be completely eradicated, the scriptures instead play into the more negative aspects of human nature, especially narcissism, and manipulate them into a force for conservation rather than annihilation.