Comparing Suspense In The Most Dangerous Game And The Cask, By Richard Connell

Oscar Wilde once said, "Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner." This is something that the characters in The Most Dangerous Game (MDG) and The Cask of Amontillado (Cask) did not listen to. In MDG, Rainsford barely escapes death from a horrible person on Ship Trap island. Montresor in Cask left his rival wine taster for dead in the catacombs of Italy because he insulted him. Both stories ended with the graphic event of someone’s death. The event leading up to the fatalities created a creepy yet intriguing story using different elements of a story. This made the reader anxious to know what happened. Although Edgar Allen Poe and Richard Connell create a suspenseful mood in Cask and MDG

With the creepy setting of Cask, Connell was able to use a plethora of nerve-racking words. This included the sentence in paragraph 69 of Cask that says, “At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious.” By using words like “remote” and “crypt” he created a suspenseful image in the reader’s head that foreshadowed at the death of Fortunado. Furthermore, it says, “It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see” (70). Once again, Connell uses words such as “vain”, “dull”, “pry”, and “depth”, which convey an eerie mood. The catacombs described in the text sounded chilling and unwelcoming with the amount of human remains. Not only was vocabulary used in The Cask of Amontillado, it was also used in MDG. When Rainsford and General Zaroff are speaking at dinner, Rainsford realizes what General Zaroff really hunts. “’Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder… Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,’ finished Rainsford stiffly” (8). With the new information of Zaroff’s cold-blooded killings, Rainsford was eager to get off Ship Trap Island. Obviously, Rainsford was appalled that Zaroff, a cold-blooded killer was so nice to him. The mention of murder created suspense, and unlike in The Cask of Amontillado, the

With the damp, dark, and death ridden catacombs in which Cask took place in, the reader felt fear for Fortunado when he was being lead to his death. For example, at the beginning of the story Montresor talks about the journey down to the catacombs. “I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors” (26). Montresor is concealing his real reason for leading Fortunado down the catacombs. It was damp, dark, and intimidating down there with the walls covered in human remains. It also says, “We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow” (52). Once again, Montresor is trying to be nice and welcoming in the scary setting to trick Fortunado into trusting him until he can make his move. With the combination of Montresor’s fake friendliness and the suspicious surrounding, the reader could infer Montresor’s intensions in the catacombs. Usually in stories with an intense setting, something bad happens or it has a suspenseful ending. Both stories showed this distinctive trait. For instance, in MDG it says, “’There was no breeze. The sea was as flat