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First published in 1924, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" is perhaps the finest example to date of the "hunter-becomes-the-hunted" tale. Connell, a combat veteran of World War I, began with a somewhat hackneyed plot line, but via excellent description, taut pacing, and crisp dialogue, the young writer produced a surprisingly enduring action-adventure story. Winner of the O'Henry Memorial Award the year it was published, the tale remains a staple of anthologies of American short fiction. Although commonly dismissed as little more than an exciting, testosterone-pumping duel between two well-matched professional hunters, there is a deeper political and social meaning to this widely read but rarely critiqued story. Beneath the thrill of the chase, the two main characters-Sanger Rainsford, a young American traveler, and General Zaroff, an old Russian aristocrat-represent competing views of the world that were at strong odds in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Rainsford, the youthful protagonist, is a masculine, elegant, swashbuckling hero. His surname certainly has a sophisticated resonance, like Rockefeller or Roosevelt, but his given name, "Sanger," carries a wonderful ambiguity: First, it can be read as a play on the Spanish word sangre, which means "blood"; second, and even more important symbolically, "Sanger" is almost certainly a play on the adjective "sanguine," which means optimistic, positive, hopeful, uncynical. In short, Rainsford represents the great American democratic ideal-a rugged individualist, square-jawed, determined, and capable of taking care of himself in any situation. He is a throwback to the Daniel Boone-Kit Carson American archetype, reared in the free and bracing air of western democracy.
Approximate Word count = 1020
Approximate Pages = 4.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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