"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."
- - - George Bernard Shaw
Richard Edward Connell wrote four books, numerous screen plays, and
hundreds of short stories, yet the one thing he's remembered for is
his short story, The Most Dangerous
Game. Every list of the world's greatest short stories
that I have ever seen includes this story. While most of his other
work is forgotten, this story stands the test of time.
Connell, for the most part, made a very good living writing 'schmaltz' - Boy meets girl - Boy loses girl - Boy gets girl - Weakling proves his courage to girlfriend - Gangster sees the light and goes straight - The star can't go on and the understudy who takes her place is a smash success - etc. - etc. - etc.
There's nothing wrong with that. In fact I loved Brother Orchid, the one where the gangster hides out in a monastery and gets religion, but Connell's writing is similar in some ways to O. Henry's, in that it is generally designed to entertain and please the general audience without making them ponder anything weighty. So one of the reasons that you don't see Connell listed up there with Shakespeare, O'Neill, and Tolstoy is because his stories rarely dealt with stark human emotion and rarely tackled complex issues. But The Most Dangerous Game wasn't like most of his other stories.
On one level it is adventure and high drama. On another it tackles questions about man's relation to the lower animals. On still another it evaluates existentialism. And there's more - but we'll get to that.
The Most Dangerous Game was originally published in the January 19, 1924 edition of Colliers Magazine. It won the O. Henry Memorial Award that year as best short story. Connell had won the award the year before with his story, A Friend of Napoleon, so his early work seemed to promise great things.
The title refers to 'man', the most dangerous animal that could possibly be hunted, and it also refers the game that is played by Sanger Rainsford and General Zaroff in the story.
Sanger Rainsford was from New York City but he was an avid hunter and the story opens with him travelling to Rio de Janeiro on a yacht to hunt jaguars in the Amazon. The ship had reached the Caribbean and Rainsford and his friend Whitney were having a strange conversation. Whitney mentioned that they were passing near Ship-Trap Island, an island with an disagreeable reputation. Whitney seemed to sense something sinister close by -
"as if the air about us was actually poisonous."
It is here, right at the start, that Connell begins to create an atmosphere that is deliciously horrifying.
When Rainsford began to talk about how hunting jaguar was "the best sport in the world", Whitney responded strangely, making comments about how the jaguars surely must feel "the fear of pain and the fear of death". But Rainsford couldn't have cared less about the jaguar's feelings. He belittled Whitney for being soft and he made his views on the matter quite clear.
"The world is made up of two classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters."
This puts the questions posed by the story clearly in front of us. If you divide the world into classes; rich and poor, members of a religion and infidels, whites and non-whites, or man and beast; does the class that has the advantage have any obligation to consider the viewpoint of the class that is at their mercy? Is the ability to show empathy and feel compassion a weakness or an attribute that has to be present in order for one to be considered an adequate human being?
As it relates to man and animal, the Greek poet, Bion, put it rather aptly in 100 B.C.
"Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
There was a certain amount of egotism in Rainsford's attitude. He made the assumption that he would never have to trade places with the animals he hunted. He was in for quite a surprise.
After Whitney went to his cabin Rainsford went up to the deck at the rear of the ship to smoke his pipe for a while. The story was written in the days before the 'smoke-nazis' had taken control of the government and the media and smoking was still an acceptable way to relax. It is rarely noted, but almost all the heroes in the great fiction of the twentieth-century smoked. They were risk- takers. Those who prefer to live a life without risk live longer but their lives are so dull and without meaning that one has to really question whether the increased quantity of their lives makes up for the decreased quality of them.
Can the kid from the suburbs, whose only brush with danger is playing video games, comprehend the lives of the kids who wallowed through the rice paddies of Vietnam or the kids who were clubbed by the police protesting the Vietnam war? Can a society that spends its childhood in car seats, its youth in bicycle helmets and knee pads, and its adult years worrying that a puff of smoke might kill them comprehend that danger might in some ways be a good thing? Can they really understand that a life worth living involves a certain amount of gamble?
As Rainsford stood on the deck peering into the pitch black night he heard three shots. He moved to the railing, but a rope struck his pipe and when he tried to retrieve it he fell overboard into "the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea". How nicely Connell reminds us that we have come to a place very much alive, where even the sea has the quality of blood.
He had no hope of catching the fast moving yacht so he swam in the direction that the gun shots had come from. As he swam, he heard the cry of a frightened animal and then a pistol shot. To Rainsford the sound of someone hunting something was like a beacon in the night. He associated hunting with all things good and he swam towards the island with the vigor of a man who sensed that a place where he would thrive and fit in was not far away. It is mentioned that Rainsford did not care what type of animal was being hunted. It made no difference to him. After all hunting is hunting. Is the death of one animal that different from the death of another? Later in the story the type of animal being hunted would make a great deal of difference to him. When he reached the shore he slept until the next afternoon.
When he awoke he examined an area near the beach where he found the weeds covered with blood. This was where the animal, and it appeared to have been a large animal, had met its death. On the ground were some small caliber cartridges and they made Rainsford wonder why someone would use such a small weapon against an animal that was obviously big game. He found human footprints there and he followed them.
As night fell he found himself moving toward a large chateau built on a cliff and surrounded on three sides by the sea. In horror stories imposing edifices seem to shape the characters of the people that live within their walls. In Rebecca we had Manderley, a mansion that seemed to be dominated by the soul of its former mistress. In Dracula we had the Count's ravaged old castle. In The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe told us of a fault in the foundation of a house that mirrored the fault in the foundation of a family. In Rosemary's Baby the gothic Bramford Building with its unsavory history had a most distinct effect on all who lived there. In Algernon Blackwood's story The Damned the estate known as, 'the Towers', had a profound effect on all who entered it. And now here in the midst of a wild jungle we have a castle where there should be no castle. It sits on the highest point of the island indicating that this must be the home of the island's master, the lord of all that is beneath him. It was described as -
"A lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom."
It is as though the owner were aspiring to be God.
The entrance was encompassed by a spiked iron fence and on the door was "a leering gargoyle for a knocker". Connell was letting his audience know that they were not in Mister Roger's Neighborhood.
"it creaked up stiffly, as if it had never before been used."
And, as we shall see later, it probably never had been used before. When the door opened Rainsford was greeted by a huge man with a waist-long black beard and a pistol. This was Ivan. He did not speak to Rainsford. Ivan was wearing a black uniform trimmed in astrakhan, which is the curly wool of lambs that are raised in the Astrakhan region of Russia. The name and costume quite clearly marked this man as a Russian.
General Zaroff made his entrance in evening clothes down a long flight of marble stairs behind Ivan and it was very reminiscent of the entrance that Bela Lugosi made in the movie version of Dracula, but this entrance was not in Bram Stoker's book so it is possible, though not certain, that the makers of movie copied the entrance of General Zaroff for the movie. At any rate it was a magnificent entrance.
General Zaroff explained that his servant, Ivan, was a deaf mute and like all Cossacks, "a bit of a savage." This is interesting because Zaroff is also a Cossack and by implication he is telling Rainsford, that while he is a man who displays all the signs of being highly civilized, he is really a savage. The Cossacks were a tribe of warlike people who lived on the grasslands of southern Russia. They were famous for being great horsemen and fierce fighters.
Rainsford observed that Zaroff had "the face of an aristocrat". This is notable for two reasons. One is that the Bolshevik Revolution took place in 1917, only a few years before this story was written. When the Communists took over the country many of the noblemen in Russia fled. The other reason that this is notable is that earlier Rainsford had talked about there only being two classes, the hunters and the hunted, and he considered himself a hunter, a member of the superior class. A Russian Aristocrat would have been someone who was in the upper class before the revolution, but who was forced into the lower class after the revolution. But it was quite clear from General Zaroff's demeanor and the fact that he had left his native country that he was not someone who would allow himself to pushed from his position of authority. Regardless of what social changes might take place, this was a man who thought that a position of privilege was his birthright. This was something that seemed to appeal to Rainsford because Rainsford felt that, no matter what the situation was, he was in the superior class. So in many ways this was the meeting of two kindred spirits.
The General mentioned that he'd read one of Rainsford's books about hunting and that he read everything that concerned hunting.
Ivan lead Rainsford to a magnificent room where he changed into evening clothes that were made by one of London's finest tailors. When Rainsford went back downstairs to dine with the General he found the dining room to be adorned with the mounted heads of animals that the General had shot and they were some of the finest specimens that Rainsford had ever seen.
Their diner consisted of champagne, borscht, and filet mignon. Here we have champagne, the beverage most associated with celebrating joyous events. We have borscht, a very good beet soup topped with sour cream. The Russians I have known have an affinity for it so it fits in nicely. Borscht is red like blood. And we have filet mignon, a small choice cut of beef from the loin. The combination seems to be joy, blood, and the meat of a prized animal. It suits the scene well.
The animal heads on the walls combined with the sophisticated menu and the General's good table manners give us very clear mixture of civilization and savagery. The two men drank cocktails from glasses made of fine crystal and ate a magnificent diner served on fine china. They used the best silverware to eat their meal. Their conversation was pleasant and quite civilized. Yet the whole time they were surrounded by the stuffed heads of murdered animals.
There is a certain similarity to America here. We have what we consider to be the most advanced society in the world today yet we surround ourselves with nuclear weapons and take great pride in the fact that our army has the ability to murder those who oppose us. Are we really the civilized people that we pretend to be or are we the modern version of Tyrannosaurus Rex, thriving because we have the ability to destroy everything in our path?
Rainsford particularly admired the head of a large Cape Buffalo and he told General Zaroff that he felt the Cape Buffalo was the most dangerous animal in the world to hunt. Zaroff told him that the animal had thrown him against a tree and fractured his skull but that he got the beast in the end and it really wasn't all that much of a challenge. The fact that Zaroff has had his skull fractured lays the groundwork for the theory that the man might be mentally unbalanced.
But when Zaroff talked of his childhood another possible explanation for his mania was revealed. As a youngster Zaroff had shot some his father's prize turkeys but, rather than punishing Zaroff for destroying animals considered valuable, his father congratulated him on his marksmanship. The unconscious message that was delivered to the child seems to have been that being a great hunter was far more important than the life of any animal.
As the discussion continued Zaroff said that his skill had eventually become so great that he found even tigers to be too easy for him. But he told Rainsford that he had his island stocked with the game that really was the most dangerous animal to hunt. Rainsford attempted in vain to guess what animal that might be.
Zaroff told Rainsford that he lived for danger and even the fiercest breasts offered no real danger to a man with the newest high-powered rifles. The fact that Zaroff craved danger to such a fanatical degree may be another indication that the man had gone insane. It is normal and even desirable for an alpha-male to want a certain amount of danger in his life to test his skill, his courage, to say that he'd been to the edge and came back, but Zaroff seemed to be seeking something so dangerous that it might rip him to shreds, and that is neither normal nor desirable. He was man who was seeking, not only to go to the edge, but to go over it.
I don't expect females to understand this. They think differently from males. But when old men are gathered together, at least in America, their talk always seems to drift into the time when they were in the military. It is almost as though their marriages, their children, and their careers were in no way as fulfilling as the time in their lives when they faced danger. The fact that many of their comrades died in the process saddens them, but it does not seem to diminish their pride in the fact that they once were courageous men. Watch them on Veteran's Day, with their medals, their uniforms, their wrinkles, and their bald heads, recalling that the fires of life once burned within their souls. In some ways it is like watching an old woman starring sadly at a picture of herself when she was young, beautiful, and desired by many suitors.
Zaroff told of how, after the incident with the Cape Buffalo, he went to the Amazon to hunt jaguars.
"I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache one night when a terrible thought pushed its way into my mind. Hunting was beginning to bore me!
There are two things worthy of note here. One is the headache. It indicates that the Cape Buffalo may have damaged Zaroff's brain and caused him to go mad. The other item is that Rainsford, at the start of the story, was on his way to the Amazon to hunt jaguars. So perhaps Rainsford's life was following exactly the same path that Zaroff's had followed. Perhaps Rainsford saw in Zaroff the man that he would eventually become.
Zaroff went on to say that the reason hunting had become boring for him was that:
"hunting had ceased to be what you call `a sporting proposition.' It had become too easy."
Strange as it might seem, Zaroff had arrived at a conclusion which is one of the main arguments that those who oppose hunting use to try to ban the practice - that the animal has no chance to win and that the outcome is certain before the 'game' ever begins.
I recall seeing a cartoon once that depicted a modern hunter with a high-powered rifle holding up a rabbit that he had shot. Next to him was a caveman holding a club standing next to a mastodon that he had killed. Over the years the balance of the battle between man and animal has definitely been tipped in man's favor.
Zaroff went on to say that the main problem was that most prey had no ability to reason. The only animal that had that ability was 'man'. Rainsford finally realized that Zaroff considered 'man' to be the most dangerous game and that the General was stocking his island with human beings so that he might hunt them down.
The idea of having a mad genius on a remote island, or in a secluded location, indulging in practices that the civilized world would find repulsive was not a new one. In 1896 H.G. Wells wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau, where Dr. Moreau attempted to turn animals into human beings. In 1899 Joseph Conrad's story, Heart of Darkness, was serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in England. Here we had Kurtz, who went to the Congo with high ideals but, once he was in the jungle, he made himself into a kind of Jungle God and became ruthless and brutal. In 1886 H. Rider Haggard gave us, She, the story of a woman who had found the secret of eternal life in the mountains of Africa and became known as, 'She who must be obeyed'. So General Zaroff was not the first person in fiction to throw off society's restraints and let his ego run rampant through the coconut palms.
Rainsford told Zaroff that his 'game' was not hunting; it was cold- blooded murder.
At that point Zaroff asked him how he could hold such a view after serving in the military during the war. To Rainsford war was in some way different than hunting down men and killing them but perhaps General Zaroff has a point. Is there really a difference? Fighting in a war might be considered a matter of self-defense but is it possible for those on both sides to consider it a matter of self-defense? Surely one side must be the aggressor. The question of which side unjustly attacked the other is generally decided after the war is over and the victor writes the history of the whole affair.
I think the fact that Zaroff was a General who no longer had an army or a military command was more than coincidental. The Communist Revolution purged Russia of its aristocrats. This man who was used to a life of rank and privilege found himself in a world that was being filled with notions of democracy and equality. There was no place for him in the real world anymore, so he found it necessary to build a world of his own where he was the supreme ruler and the inhabitants were his serfs and his sport. The story was written after World War I, 'the war to end all wars'. I believe that many of the things in the story that apply to hunting also apply to the military way of thinking and to war.
And we are about to have a war between Rainsford and Zaroff and in this case there is no doubt that Zaroff is the one who provoked it but in many ways all he is doing is living by the principles that Rainsford, himself, claims to believe in. Rainsford clearly states that the greatest joy in his life is hunting animals and killing them. It is the same with Zaroff. As long as the animal is some creature dissimilar from us its all ok with Rainsford. But when Rainsford finds himself and others like him about to become the hunted animals he suddenly, and for the first time in his life, has moral objections to the idea.
Zaroff scoffed at Rainsford's objections and declared that the weak existed only for the pleasure of the strong. A great deal of this story revolves around the idea of empathy, or the lack of it. If you have enough morality to be able to imagine yourself in the other man's shoes you consider him to be your kin, but if you see nothing in the other man that is like yourself he suddenly devolves into to a lower creature, not worthy of your time or compassion. Zaroff demonstrated this by saying:
"I hunt the scum of the earth: sailors from tramp ships - lassars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels"
While the word 'lassars' is used, I believe that Connell was referring to lascars, sailors from India and the Bay of Bengal region. The fundamental point here is that Zaroff rationalizes the killing of these people by classifying them as creatures that have genes that are inferior to his. We do this on a regular basis, although we don't like to admit it. We kill a fly or mosquito without thinking twice about it, but if we accidently run over a cat crossing the street we are heartsick at having destroyed a living creature. We see in a cat or a dog a creature we can relate to. We do not see that in insects. We are shocked to see that people in some parts of the world eat dogs and think it silly that in India cows are revered. We eat cows, pigs, and chickens regularly and shed not a tear as we cover their dead flesh with ketchup and mustard. If we heard of someone doing the same with the dead flesh of a dog or cat we would call the Humane Society.
We don't admit it but we also have a classification system for the worth of human beings as well. When a plane crashes it is not uncommon for the newscaster to say, "50 people died but luckily no Americans were on board." The unspoken message is that the lives of foreigners are worth something but the lives of Americans are worth more. Within our society we classify worth by how much the person is like us. In my own city people complain about homeless people being an eyesore in the downtown area and they demand that the government do something to remove them. I've heard fat, grotesquely ugly people in the suburbs make this complaint. Apparently the definition of an 'eyesore' has more to do with wealth than personal appearance.
My former neighborhood, South Omaha, is now predominately hispanic. Second generation Polish and Czech residents complain that these people let their dogs run free and repair their automobiles in their yards and speak a foreign language. When I recall the days of my youth I remember the parents of the Poles and Czechs doing exactly the same thing. To make a person seem less of a human being we are we must first find out what there is about them that is different from us and then use that to regulate them to some lower classification on the human scale.
This practice is particularly evident during times of war. During World War II the Germans were referred to as 'Krauts' and the Japanese were referred to as 'Japs'. While the Vietnam War took place the Vietnamese were referred to as 'Gooks'. Now that we have 'The War of Terrorism' we hear people talk of 'Ragheads' and 'Camel Jockeys'. The whole concept is to put across the idea that the enemy is not like us and therefore its 'ok' to kill them. This is what Zaroff was doing.
He even included 'whites' on his list of undesirables. To Zaroff anyone who did not have Cossack blood running through his veins was a lesser creature than he was. The audience for which Connell wrote in 1920's was not without its share of racists and upper-class elitists and many of them might well have agreed with Zaroff's view that other races and cultures were inferior to caucasians. So Connell cleverly added 'whites' to the group of people that Zaroff thought to be inferior. While I don't know it for a fact, I believe he did this to jolt the white angola-saxon protestant audience from their comfortable positions of security by letting them know that they were not the only people who could sit in judgement of others. They too could be judged and found lacking in some quality necessary for acceptance.
Racism and classism are not exact sciences. The rules are made up as needed to exclude anyone who might be convenient from the human race. When the qualifications for being an accepted member of society start to be codified the only ones that are secure are those writing the code. This was true of the Salem Witchhunt, the Nazi Holocaust, and the last meeting your neighborhood covenant committee.
The General took Rainsford to the window and showed him false lights that he had set up to indicate that there was a channel were there was none. In this manner he got ships to crash upon the rocks and their crews provided him with game for his hunts. One of the faults that I see in this story is that Rainsford, who happened to be one of the greatest hunters in the world, fell off of his ship completely by accident. It would have been better if he would have been bought to Zaroff's island by design instead of by chance.
General Zaroff went on say that he put his captives through a training school where they were given good food and exercise. Then he would tell them they were going hunting and he would give them a good knife and three days worth of food to take with them. The process was somewhat similar to the good treatment that a bull receives before it faces the matador. Zaroff gave his quarries a three hour head start and hunted them only with a small caliber pistol. To Zaroff all of this seemed to make the thing a fair game. If the man eluded Zaroff for three days he was allowed to go free. Of course, no one had ever done that.
The General explained that if a man chose not participate in his game he turned him over to Ivan, who was once the Czar's chief knouter. A knout is a whip made of leather that was used on criminals in Russia. After several days of being whipped by Ivan even the most reluctant captive agreed to play Zaroff's game.
When the prey proved to be elusive Zaroff would use his dogs to hunt them down. He had a dozen huge black dogs that he let guard the grounds of his estate at night to make sure that no one entered or left. In the midst of Zaroff's discussion about hunting men with dogs he began to whistle a song from the Folies Bergere. Again we have the veil of civilization covering the face of raw savagery.
Connell has built up the terror little by little and like a good piece of music this scene is reaching a crescendo. When the General invited Rainsford to visit his trophy room where the human heads were displayed, Rainsford said that he was feeling ill and asked to be excused. The General agreed and told him that the next night they would hunt. While the trophy room with human heads was never shown in Connell's story, it was shown the first movie adaptation in 1932. It served in some ways as the inspiration for the Catacombs of the Cathedral of the Dead in my novel, Intercourse With the Dead.
Rainsford had trouble getting to sleep that night. Near morning he heard a pistol shot and he knew that Zaroff had succeeded in killing a black man that he had decided to hunt that evening. Connell mentions the gunshot only in passing but the import of it is very important. Because of the prevailing racism at the time it would have been fairly rare for a white man to sympathize with a black in those days yet it is quite clear that Rainsford was beginning to see that he was not in some group distinct from the rest of the human race. In the black man's death he could see a disturbing image of his own future and the bullets from Zaroff's pistol would not pause to evaluate the color of the hide they were entering.
At lunch the next day he had Crapes Suzette and a glass of Chablis with the General, still another sign of civilization. It is never explained in the story who does the cooking at Zaroff's place but, whoever it was, they weren't from Mel's Diner.
Rainsford was given camouflage clothes, a long knife, a supply of food, and three hours head start. At first he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the General as possible but then he realized that on an island sooner or later he would be found.
"He was in a picture with a frame of water, and his operations, clearly, must take place within that frame."
He created a trail that lead in circles to deceive the General and then rested in the crouch of a tree where he thought he would be safe.
But, by morning, he saw Zaroff following his trail and coming to the base of the tree that he hid in. The General lit a cigarette, smiled, and left. Rainsford realized that Zaroff knew exactly where he was hiding and could have easily killed him but Zaroff wanted to get another day's sport out of him, so, like the fisherman who has his catch hooked and in the net, Zaroff released his catch so that had he could have the joy of pursuing him again. In the test of skills Rainsford had lost and only the arrogance of his opponent had allowed him to live.
True strength involves a modicum of mercy. The truly strong destroy an opponent only if there's no other choice. It is part of the system of honor which is discussed more fully in my criticism of The Count of Monte Cristo. To crush an opponent who has no chance of winning is a mark of weakness and insecurity. But Zaroff not did let Rainsford live out of mercy; instead he wanted to prolong his victim's agony and to prolong his own sadistic joy by displaying his over-whelming supremacy over his opponent's futile efforts to compete.
Rainsford found a large dead tree and used it to make a deadfall trap. When Zaroff came through the jungle following Rainsford's trail his foot tripped a vine that Rainsford had used to hold the tree upright. The falling tree injured Zaroff's shoulder but it didn't stop him. He went back to his castle to dress his wound but he promised that he would be back.
Rainsford dug a pit and placed wooden stakes that he had sharpened to a point in the bottom of it. Then he covered it with branches and leaves. The dog that Zaroff was using to track Rainsford fell into the pit and died but Zaroff lived and went back to get his entire pack of dogs.
Rainsford headed for the swampy part of the island. He tied his knife to a young sapling with some vine and made it into the sort of spring-type trap that was used so often in Vietnam. Zaroff came through the jungle with Ivan in the lead holding the pack of hounds. The trap successfully killed Ivan but Zaroff and the dogs still pursued Rainsford. Connell tells us:
"Rainsford knew now how an animal at bay feels."
This is the point we have been waiting for. The moment of empathy. It has been said that a good suspense story is like a poker game where the pot gets higher with each bet. Connell has done this marvelously. First Rainsford faced only General Zaroff, then Zaroff and a dog, and finally Zaroff, Ivan, and all the dogs. The stakes kept getting higher and the odds of winning kept getting lower.
With the pack closing in on him Rainsford ran to a place about 20 feet above the sea and dove into the water. Zaroff's reaction to the fact that his prey had escaped him was rather nonchalant. He shrugged his shoulders, lit a cigarette, and hummed a tune from the opera, Madame Butterfly. He did express disappointment though, because he thought that Rainsford, by diving into the water, had not played the game fairly.
A crucial key to evaluating this story is the determination of what does and what does not constitute a fair game. Up until this point, General Zaroff was clearly in command and he wrote all the rules for the game. At first Rainsford accepted those rules because he thought that he had no other choice. At the start of the game Rainsford described himself as being in a picture framed by water and stated that he must operate within that frame. But when he began to 'think outside of the box' he found a way to win. There was no reason to follow the enemy's rules. They were designed by the enemy to insure the enemy's victory.
Many of the evaluations that apply to a fair game on the island can be applied to the world in general. Is it a fair game for the United States of America, the country with the most nuclear weapons and the most powerful military on earth, to claim that it is attacking a small relatively powerless nation out of self defense? We also have recently seen the rules of the game change drastically. While the U.S. spent its money and manpower on missiles and conventional weaponry, the followers of Osama Bin Laden 'thought outside of the box' and changed the rules of the game by staging a totally different type of attack.
When the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala and installed a brutal dictatorship that lead to the death of over a 100,000 Guatemalans we thought no more of it than Rainsford did of killing a jaguar. But when our own people were killed in the 9/11 attacks we called it a barbaric act of savagery. 9/11 was a barbaric act of savagery, but many of our actions towards other nations on this planet were also barbaric acts of savagery. Like Rainsford at the beginning of the story, we have not yet learned the meaning of empathy. We still categorize our own small elite group as being the only nationality worthy of respect and good treatment.
When Zaroff returned to his castle, defeated for the first time. He ate an elegant dinner, read for a while, and then went to his bedroom.
Hidden behind the curtains of Zaroff's bedroom was Rainsford. By swimming to the other side of the island he was able to get to the castle before Zaroff who had to travel through the thick over-grown jungle. Now the final combat would take place. Connell does not tell us in what manner the two men fought. He only lets know that Zaroff said:
"One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed."
And then he lets us know that it was Rainsford who slept in the bed.
There those who suggest that Rainsford might have taken Zaroff's place after the story ended and that he might have continued to hunt men. I find that highly unlikely. The whole purpose of the story was to show how Rainsford learned the meaning of compassion. It would undo the whole thing for him to go back to his previous point of view and become even more unfeeling than he was at the start of the story.
Another problem with this story that I must bring up is the fact that Whitney and the other people on the yacht didn't come back to look for Rainsford. Well, perhaps they owed him money or coveted his jaguar gun?
Zaroff expressed a sort of Darwinistic view that only the strong and smart had a right to survive. If those are the qualifications for survival I'd like know why the human race has so much trouble getting rid of mosquitos, rats, and cockroaches. Which society is preferable? The one that allocates all its resources to the smartest students and the strongest athletes or the one that uses some its resources to insure that even the weakest members of the society can achieve their highest potential. It is not all cut and dried with kindness winning out easily over self-preservation. But a society without compassion is most definitely a cold and brutal place to live. And a society that doesn't strive for excellence and take pride the achievements of its most gifted members will falter and fall by the wayside. The search for reasonable middle ground will probably continue forever.
It is interesting to compare Connell's story with two other famous stories set in the jungle, Joseph Conrad's, Heart of Darkness, and Ernest Hemingway's, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
Heart of Darkness is a great story buried in bad plot structure and endless meandering ramblings. It is not nearly as enjoyable to read as The Most Dangerous Game. Conrad includes much that seems to have little to do with the central plot line and the action is often delayed for meaningless events. On top of that its not entirely clear as to just what Conrad was trying to say. The saga is similar to the opus composed by the beatnik who said he wasn't going use any notes, just various shadings of silence. While its clear that there is something magnificent in Heart of Darkness, its almost impossible to say what it is and, like a Bob Dylan song, the many explanations offered over the years as to what it really means probably display more profound thought than the artist put into the original work.
Heart of Darkness was also the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film, Apocalypse Now.
The central character was Marlow, who also appeared in Conrad's novel, Lord Jim. Marlow's aunt helped him get a job as riverboat captain with a Belgian company. The aunt was portrayed as quite naive as to how the world really worked. Like Rainsford she did not seem to question the values of the society in which she lived. Marlow, however was somewhat of a skeptic.
Marlow was sent to the Congo to take command of a riverboat. He arrived to find that it had sank shortly before he got there. Repairs to the boat took an incredibly long time. Marlow began to hear of a man named Kurtz who had been an idealistic intellectual when he entered the jungle. But rumor had it that Kurtz had gone mad. Kurtz traded in ivory for the company and he did very well. He had gone into the jungle with plans to civilize the savages and he even produced an pamphlet describing the best ways to go about this. But at bottom of his pamphlet Kurtz had handwritten -
"Exterminate all the brutes!"
It is paradoxical in several ways. The elegant pamphlet was obviously the work of a civilized man who had put a great deal of thought into how his fellow man should be treated but the message scrawled on the last page seems more the gut reaction of a crazed Rush Limbaugh fan.
When Marlow finally arrived at Kurtz' outpost in the jungle he found that Kurtz had passed himself off as a God to the natives and that he got his ivory through brutality and violence. The fence posts surrounding his compound were adorned with human heads. This is a much more graphic collection of heads than the one possessed by General Zaroff. Zaroff's collection was merely a reflection of his vanity. Kurtz' collection was intentionally meant to strike fear into the hearts of all who viewed them. It was there to show what the wrath of an angered God actually looked like.
Kurtz was physically, as well as mentally, ill. He was dying and Marlow made him come aboard the boat to be taken back to civilization. Kurtz considered it important that he not be forgotten. He made Marlow the custodian of his legacy. All though the trip up the river and back down it Marlow saw things which made absolutely no sense and it makes us ask whether or not it was possible to go mad in a world already filled with madness.
In the modern world we applaud our soldiers for killing our enemies in Iraq, a country which presented no real threat to us, but when two Columbine High School students went on a rampage and killed those they perceived to be their enemies they were considered to be crazy. Murder that is socially sanctioned is considered an act of heroism while murders sanctioned only by a person's own personal hatreds are considered the epitome of evil. So it was with Kurtz. He had started acting on his own and that was not permitted. Just as Zaroff had started to make his own rules, Kurtz proclaimed himself a God and made his own rules. Gods without popes, priests, rabbis, and other middlemen are not permitted. You can't kill a mafia member in Chicago without getting permission from the Don and you can't kill people in a civilized society without getting permission from the state.
In fiction James Bond was given a 'license to kill' but the fiction is based on fact. Members of some government organizations do have a 'license to kill'. We would not give such a privilege to a priest, a rabbi, a philosopher, or any of the other people that we assume are guarding our moral values, so the assumption must be made that this has something to do with self-preservation. But are the actions taken by the secret organizations of government really taken to defend us from a threatening enemy or do they have an agenda of their own? And what happens when the agency feels its existence threatened, perhaps by those it is supposed to serve? Does it act in the best interest of the people or in its own best interest?
Within society there is an evaluation process that must take place before a death warrant can be issued. At least there is supposed to be. We must determine if just cause exists for a life to be taken. Judges and juries must deliberate. But it is not uncommon for the government to issue rewards for the deaths of individuals it considers threats to its security and this takes place without any due process. Supposedly, this is an act of self-preservation. But when there's no judicial process there is no way to be sure.
The old joke goes - 'The three biggest lies in the world are: The check is in the mail, I didn't know she was your wife, and I'm from the government. I'm here to help you.' We really only trust the government when we are at war and then it is because we have no choice in the matter. But what if the government takes us into war on false pretenses? Where does that leave us? Who decides what is justified and unjustified then?
As Kurtz died, he cried out-
"The Horror! The Horror!"
Like much of Conrad's writing it seems fraught with meaning and infinitely vague at the same time. Marlow didn't want to watch the man die and he went to the ship's kitchen which was suddenly overrun by flies. I would suggest that one possible theme that runs through almost all jungle epics is a question that arises in existential philosophy. Existentialism takes the position that, if we were not created by a God, then the task of defining who we are and why we exist is up to us. One of the first existential writers, Kierkegaard, said:
"I must find a truth that is true for me..the idea for which I can live or die."
Those who leave civilization for the jungle also leave the belief system that civilization imposes on them. Where there are no priests, no police, no judges, and no neighbors there are no rules other than the ones a man makes for himself. Religion, social convention, and the thoughts of the great philosophers and moralists cease to exist without a society that actively supports them. Man is left to define his own code of conduct. In civilization society dictates the ideas that we should live or die for. In the jungle it is up to you to decide which ideas are that important to you.
Zaroff was an absolute Darwinist. He lived and died for the game that he believed in. In its purest sense this would lead to the strongest and smartest surviving, mating, and sending on the very best genes into the next generation. If life was really that simple perhaps Zaroff's beliefs might have had some merit.
Kurtz was another case. When left alone in the jungle to formulate his own moral code this idealist fell apart and yielded to the most monstrous impulses that were hidden in his soul. Perhaps 'the horror' he speaks of is the horror of looking into one's own inner being and finding out that, instead of the wonderful person you pictured yourself to be, you are a weak, self-indulgent, vain, and brutal monster.
When Marlow visited Kurtz' fiancee back in the civilized world she asked what his last words were. Marlow lied and told her that he died speaking her name. All of the people that Kurtz knew before he went into the jungle remembered him as an intelligent and decent person. They were in many ways as naive as Marlow's aunt who we encountered at the beginning of the story. In some ways Conrad seems to be telling us that the interior of the human heart, the core of what we think of as humanity, is not a pretty thing to behold. To Conrad only civilization prevents us from being mad beasts. In regard to both Kurtz and General Zaroff it appears to be a fair assumption.
It may be an over-simplification to say that those who leave civilization often leave their value system at the port of embarkation but perhaps there's something to it. Friends of mine who served in Vietnam wrote me letters about how they would be glad to see their tour of duty end and 'get back to the world'. One of the nicest guys I ever knew told me about how he and other guys in his unit bought Vietnamese children to use for target practice. He couldn't live with what he'd done over there and he ended up drinking himself to death. Just as Kurtz' friends could not have began to fathom the changed man that Marlow found, it was hard for me to imagine that a decent guy could go to a war and lose his whole perspective. And like Kurtz he castigated and damned himself more than any jury of his peers could.
Critics of Conrad say that you can't blame Africa for what Europeans did while they were there. There's probably some truth to that too. But when some people find themselves free from societies probing eyes they sometimes do go through dramatic changes and we find minister's daughters doing stripteases while on Spring Break in Cancun.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber was published in the September, 1936, edition of Cosmopolitan. It was based on an incident that actually took place in Kenya.
Next to Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway was probably the nation's most famous big game hunter. Hemingway was the epitome of what was in those days called a 'sportsman'. In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber Francis Macomber had gone to Africa with his wife, Margot, to go on 'safari' and hunt big game. Their guide was Robert Wilson, the sort of man who was referred to in those days as a 'great white hunter'. It seems ironic that white men who faced beasts with high powered rifles gained reputations as heroes while black men who faced the same animals with spears went unheralded.
What is unique about this story is that Hemingway actually analyzed hunting in a very honest manner showing its cruelty as well as its nobility. Those who oppose hunting might say that there is no bravery or nobility involved but I wonder if they could stand their ground with a lion or tiger charging towards them. Francis Macomber could not. He was a coward. He ran and, to make matters worse, his wife watched him do it. At first she made light of it:
"What importance is there to whether Francis is any good at killing lions? That's not his trade. That's Mr. Wilson's trade. Mr. Wilson is really very impressive killing anything. You do kill anything, don't you?"
Wilson had killed the lion when Macomber lost his nerve and they celebrated the kill in the same manner that General Zaroff celebrated kills - with champagne. The racism of the time is apparent. Although some of the native men acting as barriers are middle-aged, they are still referred to as 'boys'. Wilson said that he whipped them when they didn't follow orders, although it was no longer legal to do so. Like Zaroff and Rainsford the people in this story valved impressive heads for mounting. In the beginning the participants seemed to be as engrossed and enraptured with hunting as Zaroff and Rainsford were.
But then Hemingway does something unexpected. He describes the shooting of the lion from the lion's viewpoint. And Wilson, unlike Rainsford and most certainly Zaroff, displayed a certain amount empathy for the wounded creature. While Macomber wanted to just leave and get away from the place where he had displayed his cowardness, Wilson's principles would not allow that.
"For one thing, he's certain to be suffering. For another, some one else might run on to him."
Wilson in some ways is the perfect existential hero. He has rejected society's code of morality but he has developed one of his own. Macomber's wife, who never showed much respect for Macomber, decided to use his act of cowardness as an excuse to have an affair with Wilson and in many ways Macomber felt that in order to win back his wife he had to prove his courage as a hunter. While women generally shun the idea of violence, it non-the-less is a fact that men who are successful in brutal activities, war, football, boxing, corporate-raiding, etc. are generally much in demand by beautiful women.
It is interesting to note that Wilson's personal moral code prevented him from leaving a wounded animal in pain but didn't stop him from sleeping with his client's wife. Part of the appeal of existentialism is that it offers the maximum in self-righteousness while demanding only the minimum in guilt. There is a certain similarity here to Zaroff. When convenient both men rationalize that everyone they've screwed over had it coming. As the bandit Calvera in the movie, The Magnificent Seven, said when he was asked what would happen to the people in the village he looted -
"I leave it to you - Can men of our profession worry about things like that? It may even be sacrilegious. If God didn't want them sheared he would not have made them sheep."
The victim gets blamed for the crime and moral responsibility is tossed out the window.
When Margot flaunted her unfaithfulness in front of her husband something in his soul changed. He resolved that the situation between them was going to change. Somehow he was going to incorporate courage into his character.
"You think that I'll take anything."
"I know you will, sweet."
"Well, I won't."
The day after the incident with the lion they went after buffalo and they chased the herd with their vehicle which was illegal. Margot commented that it seemed unsporting. Again we see Hemingway, the consummate hunter, raise questions about hunting. Margot said:
"Just because you've chased some helpless animals in a motor car you talk like heroes.
A rather surprising statement to find in a Hemingway story.
Macomber had great success in shooting the buffalo and he seemed for the first time in his life to find courage. Up until this time Macomber's moral code had been written for him by his wife and Wilson. He had to live up to what they expected him to be. But, as he gained skill, he seemed to began to gain confidence and the way that he perceived himself started to become more important than the way that others viewed him. Wilson seemed to begin to admire Macomber.
"he had seen men come of age before and it always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first birthday."
While there is nothing manly in shooting a creature that has not got a chance against you, there is something manly in facing your own fears and overcoming them.
Unfortunately Margot preferred a weak husband who would let her fool around to a strong one who would put his foot down and, just as her husband was being incredibly brave by standing his ground against a large wounded buffalo that was charging him, Margot shot Francis in the back of the head. Was she firing at the buffalo or her husband? Wilson seemed to think it was her husband. An interesting side note is that she used a Mannlicher, the same sort of gun Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly used to kill President Kennedy.
The reason I made reference to The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is that it offers a more rounded perspective on hunting than what we see in The Most Dangerous Game.
When asked in public, 15-year-old girls everywhere say that all life is sacred and that killing anything is wrong. I find it odd that no one ever asks them those sort questions while they're eating a hamburger. A more practical and adult view would be that killing animals and even human beings is sometimes justified but it is not a thing to be taken lightly. Massive numbers of people lost their lives in the war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan but it was a moral fight and, as tragic as their deaths were, the cause did justify those deaths. I'm not sure that I could say the same about the wars we have engaged in since then.
Then we have the question of ethical treatment of animals. Does it apply only to mammals? Is it wrong to train a pit bull to fight and ok to eat a pig's rear end for Easter dinner? Is it wrong to kick your pet iguana and ok to dissect a frog in biology class? If we really do respect all life on earth why do we send children home from school for having head lice?Oddly enough, the animals that we like to eat have done better than the animals that would like to eat us. There lots of cows, pigs, and chickens but lions and tigers are in danger of extinction. So perhaps it would be worthwhile to take a look back at the times in which The Most Dangerous Game was written and try to gain some prospective as to how our relationship with animals has changed.
The times were very different from the times we live in now. Most Americans lived on farms or in small towns. Talking movies and television were not yet invented. This was the 'hay day' of magazines and short stories. It was the cheapest and best form of entertainment available.
Because people were familiar with the farm environment they didn't think twice about cutting a chicken's head off and having it run around afterward. Butchering a pig or a steer was often done at the farm. Hunting game like deer or pheasant was a regular part of life for many people. Today's people enjoy their hamburgers and baby back ribs but would probably consider it a traumatic experience to watch their dinner's exit from the world of the living.
People living on farms or in small towns craved adventure and tales of unexplored places and daring deeds titillated them. In 1855 Dr. Livingstone, a missionary and doctor who was exploring the interior of Africa, discovered Victoria Falls. To put things in some prospective, a lion mauled his left arm and he was unable to use it for the rest of his life. While the prospect of people eating animals angers vegetarians, the prospect of animals eating people doesn't raise of much a stir in the carnivore community. Most lions, tigers, and bears would rather gnaw on a human infant's head than dance in The Wizard of Oz.
Livingstone had captured the imagination of people all over the world and when four years passed with no word from him the world began to think that Livingstone might be dead. New York Herald reporter, Henry Stanley, set out to search Africa until he found out for sure if Dr. Livingstone was still alive. On November 18, 1871 he found him alive and uttered the famous words,
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume."
Stanley's book, How I Found Livingstone, became the biggest best-seller of its day and young boys dreamed of becoming explorers and missionaries and big game hunters.
Today big game hunting is outlawed in most parts of the world, even in most of Africa, but in those days it was a test of courage. There are those today who look at pictures of President Teddy Roosevelt standing with his foot on a dead rhinoceros that he shot and decry the cruelty of killing such a magnificent beast. But when you look at the size of the creature (and he shot some damn big rhinos) and imagine it charging right at you, I think it took some courage to stand and fire, rather than running for the nearest tree.
Roosevelt's feelings about the animal were far different than those of people today.
"he seemed what he was, a monster surviving over from the world's past, from the days when the beasts of the prime ran riot in their strength,"
On Roosevelt's hunting safari to Africa in 1909, after he left office, he set out to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. He and his son Kermit, accompanied by 250 porters went through British East Africa and the Belgian Congo. They killed 512 animals, including 17 lion, 11 elephants, and 20 rhinoceros. At the time no one was particularly outraged by it.
It was Frank Buck who began to change things. Frank Buck caught animals in Asia for zoos in the United States and made a good living doing it. When he started writing short stories about his exploits for The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers, the same magazines that Connell was selling many stories too, people actually began to see animals as more than beasts.
Eventually, Buck wrote a book called, Bring 'Em Back Alive. It was followed by, Fang and Claw, and On Jungle Trails. The books dealt with hunting in a whole new way. It wasn't just sneaking up on the animal and shooting it anymore, now it involved learning about the animal's habits and its way of life, and using those things to trap the animal alive. The National Education Association endorsed his books as wonderful learning tools for children.
The story I remember most involved an enormous orangutan that lived high in the trees of Malaysia. The animal had to travel a long way for water, so Buck left a bucket of water beneath the tree it favored so the animal won't have to travel so far. Buck began to add a little bit of rum to the water and each day he increased the amount until eventually one day the orangutan was too drunk to climb back up the tree and he was easily captured. Buck's stories emphasized brains over bullets.
His stories also presented some of the harsh facts of life that we tend to sweep under the rug today. Although it might be hard for a modern audience to imagine, the leading cause of death in Sumatra at the time was 'being eaten by a tiger'. Just as we in America had slaughtered vast herds of buffalo, wiped out the grizzly bear, and made shoes out of alligators in our expansion into lands that once were wild, the growing population of Sumatra was moving into land that once was the hunting ground of the tiger and conflict between man and beast was inevitable.
Some of the questions that do not get asked are - Would you want to risk alligator attack while visiting Disney World? Would you want your trip on the interstate from Chicago to Denver interrupted by a buffalo stampede? Would it be ok for a mountain loin to maul your children while they were at the park? In some communities they make the children wear helmets when they ride bicycles so they won't get hurt. Would those same communities willingly cohabit with the magnificent beasts they are trying to save from extinction or is that the job of some other community far away?
You say there aren't any wild animals in your community? Well, once there were wild animals there. At least up until the time that your ancestors killed them.
Frank Buck brought a sort of balance into the argument. He became the first true media celebrity. His books were made into movies. There were Bring 'Em Back Alive bubblegum cards. Children wore pith helmets and neckerchiefs that bore Frank Buck's name. , There were Frank Buck board games. knives, soap, pencil boxes, and watches. His endorsement was sought for such products as tires, guns, whisky, food, automobiles, toys, clothing, and cigarettes.
The love affair with jungles didn't begin or end with Frank Buck. It had its roots in the tales of Conrad, Haggard, Wells, and Rudyard Kipling and it lasted into the 1950's. In October of 1912 Edgar Rice Burrough's story, Tarzan of the Apes, introduced the world to a new kind of hero. Later Olympic swimming champion, Johnny Weissmuller, would play Tarzan in the movies. Still later Weissmuller would play the experienced guide, Jungle Jim. The silent movie, Trader Horn, became the first movie actually shot on location in Africa. Circus owner Clyde Beaty achieved fame in the movies in much the same way that Buck did. Comic books gave us Classics Illustrated versions of Frank Buck's stories and the fictional tales of Congo Bill, who by rubbing a ring on his finger could change into Congorilla, a huge white ape. 1954 gave us the beautiful Irish McCalla as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, sort of a female Tarzan with just a pinch of H. Rider Haggard's, She.
Today we view the jungle and the animals in it as sort of a zoo without walls and we ignore the fact that human beings live in the same area. In fact we often put more emphasis on saving the lives of animals than we do on saving the lives of human beings. We study half of the ecosystem problem. We learn about how sea gulls in San Diego were shot by fishermen for taking fish from their boats and the end result was that, with fewer sea gull droppings in the ocean, the plants that fed the fish died, the number of fish that the area could support was decreased, and the fishermen made less money.
We do not study about how the increase in deer has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number car/deer collisions and an increase in deer ticks that cause horrible diseases in human beings. We do not study how the increase in the bear population has lead to more bear home invasions and bear attacks. Our views on the animal world are still quite naive. It was not long ago that a Florida women lost her arm feeding an alligator. She said that she thought it was tame.
We talk about saving species on the verge of extinction but when it comes down to people losing the use of their land to help protect animals no one here, or abroad, is very eager give up land they consider to be their own to achieve the goal. Is there a happy balance somewhere in all this? If we can get people weaker than us to make the sacrifices necessary for the project perhaps it can be done. If it involves sacrifice on our part, I don't see it happening.
As you can see, Connell's little adventure story raises many questions and sparks many debates. That too is a mark of great literature.
What's this ol' world coming to
Things just ain't the same
Anytime the hunter gets captured by the game
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
From the Marvelettes song The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game written by Smokey Robinson.
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RICHARD CONNELL
LINKS
Which animal really is 'the most
dangerous game'? Find out here.
Article about comic books and TV shows
that have elements of 'The Most Dangerous
Game'.
Complete text on Connell's short story,
'The Most Dangerous Game'.
Films written by Connell and films based
on his stories.