Killing In Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game'
Killing In the Name Of Hunting, murder, and war are all words men have made to distinguish between types of killing and the varied justifications made for committing the same deed. In carrying out this most grave and final of all endeavors, as any other action, one sees it is not the actual temporal action itself that matters and defines the moment. The intention with which one sets out is even more important than what is done, and determines, at least within the actor’s mind, the righteousness of the act. G.E.M. Anscombe’s “War and Murder” provides the baseline definitions of how to categorize killing during a time of war. These views are supplemented by fictional works in which death and its cause play a central role. Richard Connell’s
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Only when in the place of the prey does he understand the fear and terror felt when pursued by the reaper. Compounding the mania experienced by Rainsford is the fact that he cannot plead ignorance. He has been the predator countless times, pursuing his living quarry with religious zeal, and he knows how this encounter ends all too often. The antagonist, General Zaroff, has grown bored of traditional hunts and sought out “the only animal with reason” (Connell). Killing men for entertainment, or “sport”, may seem barbaric to most civilized people. But many other deaths occur daily from trivial pursuits from the running of the bulls in Pamplona to the ski slopes in the Alps. Furthermore, if the General seems desensitized to the destruction of human life, this doubtless stems from his service as a Cossack officer, where killing men was compulsory and undoubtedly an adrenaline-fueled adventure. The “legitimate” killing in war very well may have given him the taste for his “barbaric” hunts. To hunt is to kill with the intention of sport. This fictionalized anecdote illustrates that the killing in itself is neither good nor bad, but judged so by the killer. When General Zaroff was hunting enemies of the Russian state in the Caucus Mountains, were those kills more honorable than his forays into his private “game reserve”? Would the General’s killings be more legitimate if he declared himself the monarch of his small island, and wrote out an ultimatum against all who washed up on his shores? Upon closer examination line used to distinguish killings
Only when in the place of the prey does he understand the fear and terror felt when pursued by the reaper. Compounding the mania experienced by Rainsford is the fact that he cannot plead ignorance. He has been the predator countless times, pursuing his living quarry with religious zeal, and he knows how this encounter ends all too often. The antagonist, General Zaroff, has grown bored of traditional hunts and sought out “the only animal with reason” (Connell). Killing men for entertainment, or “sport”, may seem barbaric to most civilized people. But many other deaths occur daily from trivial pursuits from the running of the bulls in Pamplona to the ski slopes in the Alps. Furthermore, if the General seems desensitized to the destruction of human life, this doubtless stems from his service as a Cossack officer, where killing men was compulsory and undoubtedly an adrenaline-fueled adventure. The “legitimate” killing in war very well may have given him the taste for his “barbaric” hunts. To hunt is to kill with the intention of sport. This fictionalized anecdote illustrates that the killing in itself is neither good nor bad, but judged so by the killer. When General Zaroff was hunting enemies of the Russian state in the Caucus Mountains, were those kills more honorable than his forays into his private “game reserve”? Would the General’s killings be more legitimate if he declared himself the monarch of his small island, and wrote out an ultimatum against all who washed up on his shores? Upon closer examination line used to distinguish killings