Violence In The Most Dangerous Game Essay

In the story, The Most Dangerous Game, the author uses many things to lead up to his climax. Richard Connell puts the characters in many different situations which cause them to overcome adversity. Connell makes it very clear that Zaroff is the antagonist and Rainsford the protagonist. Connell uses violence in many ways, the main two are physical and psychological.
The first way Connell uses violence and we see this first hand at the very beginning, is psychological. The author uses the psychological way to show that there will be physical violence in the paragraphs to come, “What I felt was a-a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread” (pg. 63). The violence that Rainsford will experience is unlimited to what happens to the physical body, it’s also what happens to his mind. Rainsford pushes this off as just Whitney’s “Pure imagination” (63). But
It shows that he is going to have to overcome certain things he did not agree with earlier in the story. “In his hand, the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford’s heart” (66). Rainsford tells him that he should not be “alarmed” that he’s not a threat but this is an indication that the protagonist does not have all the clues. This is opening the door for what’s to come with Zaroff. All the dirty secrets of the “game” are soon to come out.
Every piece of dialogue that Connell uses in, The Most Dangerous Game, has a message. These few that are pulled out specifically show that violence was in the air from the very beginning and there was no way getting around it. It all leads up to what to expect when Zaroff explained the “game” to Rainsford, that the hunt is not for animals but human flesh. Connell uses Rainsford because it was against his morals in the beginning but it shows that fear can overcome and Rainsford was committed to surviving the violence and trauma he was put