Literary Elements Of The Most Dangerous Game By Richard Connell

Literary Analysis Essay

Dr. Seuss once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” These wise words of Dr. Seuss could not be more true, especially when referring to the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game”, by Richard Connell. This short story contains a myriad of lessons. One main lesson or theme that could be taken from this short story is “Everything is not what it seems.” Richard Connell, the author of “The Most Dangerous Game”, conveys the theme of “Everything is not what it seems through many literary elements , including dynamic characterization and setting.

One literary element of “The Most Dangerous Game” that conveys this theme is dynamic characterization.

Later in the story, the narrator explained an incident of Rainsford falling off the ship he was on. The narrator said that he swam all the way from the ocean to land and when he reached the shore, he was exhausted. The land that he arrived on, happened to be the dreaded land of ‘Ship Trap Island’, but to his surprise, it was not as dreadful as he had expected. He even came across a house that seemed welcoming enough for him to recover in. When Rainsford first described this house, he described it as a welcoming place, and he also seemed to think that the owner of the home, Zaroff, was welcoming as well. This was obvious when Connell had wrote, “His first impression was that the man was singulary handsome…” (15). It was also obvious that Rainsford found Zaroff a good, welcoming, host when Connell had wrote, “He was finding the general a most thoughtful and affable host, a true cosmopolite”(17) As the narrator said, despite the welcoming feeling Rainsford got from Zaroff in the beginning of the story, towards the end, things started to change. Rainsford learned that Zaroff was not a good man, but actually a man who hunted humans. This was clear when Connell stated, ““Hunting? General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder” (Connell 19). All of these events in the story were perfect examples of how the theme, “Everything is not what it seems”, was conveyed through setting in the way that they showed how although Zaroff seemed like a pretty decent man in the beginning, he was just using it as a way to lure Rainsford in. Clearly, the theme “Everything is not what it seems” was conveyed through the literary element