11/8/2023 0 Comments Deadly prey![]() He sacrifices his knife and ties it to a sapling to make another trap, which kills Ivan when he stumbles into it. The next day Rainsford creates a Burmese tiger pit, which kills one of Zaroff's hounds. This contraption slightly wounds Zaroff's shoulder, causing him to return home for the night, but he shouts his respect for the trap before departing. After the failed attempt at eluding Zaroff, Rainsford builds a Malay man-catcher, a weighted log attached to a trigger. Zaroff finds him easily, but decides to play with him as a cat would with a mouse, standing underneath the tree Rainsford is hiding in, smoking a cigarette, and then abruptly departing. Rainsford reluctantly accepts the terms and receives his equipment from Ivan.ĭuring his head start, Rainsford lays an intricate trail in the forest and then climbs a tree. Zaroff becomes impersonal and lays out the parameters of the game as he would to any captive sailor. Rainsford staunchly refuses and demands to leave the island, disappointing Zaroff who then has another epiphany: he will hunt Rainsford. Rainsford denounces the hunt as barbarism, but Zaroff replies by claiming that " life is for the strong." Zaroff is enthused to have another world-class hunter as a companion and, at breakfast, offers to take Rainsford along with him on his next hunt. Captives are offered a choice between being hunted or turned over to Ivan, who once served as official knouter for the Great White Czar. He reveals that he has won every hunt to date. Any captives who can elude Zaroff, Ivan, and a pack of hunting dogs for three days are set free. He takes the survivors captive and hunts them for sport, giving them food, clothing, a knife, and a head start of several hours, and using only a small-caliber pistol for himself. After escaping the Russian Revolution, he purchased Ship-Trap, built a home for himself, and rigged the island with lights to lure passing ships into the jagged rocks that surround it. Over dinner, the middle-aged Zaroff explains that although he has been hunting animals since he was a boy, he has decided that killing big game has become boring for him. Zaroff, another big-game hunter, knows of Rainsford from his published account of hunting snow leopards in Tibet. Rainsford swims to Ship-Trap and finds an opulent chateau inhabited by two Cossacks: the owner, General Zaroff, and his gigantic deaf-mute servant, Ivan. Hearing gunshots in the distance, he rushes to the rail for a better look and accidentally falls overboard. After a discussion about the nearby Ship-Trap Island, which has an evil reputation among sailors, Whitney goes to bed while Rainsford stays on deck to smoke his pipe. Summary īig-game hunter Sanger Rainsford and his friend Whitney are traveling by ship to the Amazon rainforest for a jaguar hunt. ![]() "The Most Dangerous Game" is one of many works that entered the public domain in the United States in 2020. It has been called the "most popular short story ever written in English." Upon its publication, it won the O. The story has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1932 RKO Pictures film The Most Dangerous Game, starring Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks and Fay Wray, and for a 1943 episode of the CBS Radio series Suspense, starring Orson Welles. The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s. The story features a big-game hunter from New York City who falls from a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. " The Most Dangerous Game", also published as " The Hounds of Zaroff", is a short story by Richard Connell, first published in Collier's on January 19, 1924, with illustrations by Wilmot Emerton Heitland. For other uses, see The Most Dangerous Game (disambiguation). This article is about the 1924 Richard Connell short story.
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