“The Most Dangerous Game,” and What Makes a Story Last

Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” is immortal in the way only true pulp masterpieces can be: you can steal it.

Connell was not a gifted writer on a line-by-line basis. His style is choppy, and too many of his clunky dialogue tags, read in quick succession—“objected Rainford,” “gasped Rainsford,” “finished Rainsford stiffly”—elicit groans. A lot of the usual artistic signifiers are missing: the characterization is thin and the themes are obvious.

It could be better, in short, but not being better has done it absolutely no harm. “The Most Dangerous Game” will be here long after many richer, subtler, and more technically proficient works have faded away.

I like thinking about why that is. I often find it frustrating when people talk about classics that “hold up” or “have aged well,” since the idea gets used as a muddled shorthand for “the politics and ideology here still feel progressive” (Star Trek, The Twilight Zone). This can speak well of the work in question, and I chose two of my favorite shows for the example. But it’s a narrow way to look at culture, pitting the past against the present—asking, rather skeptically, if they can ever live up to us, then congratulating the championed artists for winning through despite their disadvantages.

It also ignores the fact that many lasting, still-beloved works haven’t, per this metric, “aged well” at all—but (most of) their adherents don’t hold them close for the illicit thrills of their worldviews. Rather, they can ignore any corrupt flesh for the sake of good bones. (“The Most Dangerous Game” doesn’t have too much to overlook on that front, thankfully, but that’s mostly because it has very little flesh at all.)

So what are those good bones? What helps a story last? Maybe three of the most pivotal are:

• the hook, i.e., a clear and interesting problem, enough to make the reader ask, “What would I do in that situation?”
• the suspense, especially when there’s enough to build it up, ease it, and build it up again
• the oral tradition element, i.e., enough simplicity and clarity that you could plausibly and compellingly “tell it,” not just summarize it

“The Most Dangerous Game” has excellent bones. The hook: a renowned big game hunter, Rainsford, washes up on an isolated island where a jaded aristocrat turns him into prey. Connell both leans into and refines the problem-solving elements, closing off possibilities as fast as Rainsford and the reader can imagine them. The aristocrat, General Zaroff, can’t be dissuaded or reasoned with. Refusal means certain death—and a painful, helpless death at that. At least Rainsford has hunting experience and woodcraft skills. So the hunt is on … and exhaustion, desperation, quicksand, traps, and dogs, all either intuitively obvious or clearly established threats, soon take their toll. The best scene of the hunt may be when Zaroff stands below a tree where Rainsford is hiding—Connell eventually punctuates it with some too-obvious explication, but before that, the tension is sublime:

Toward morning when a dingy gray was varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird focused Rainsford’s attention in that direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, he watched. . . . That which was approaching was a man.

It was General Zaroff. He made his way along with his eyes fixed in utmost concentration on the ground before him. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the ground. Rainsford’s impulse was to hurl himself down like a panther, but he saw that the general’s right hand held something metallic—a small automatic pistol.

The hunter shook his head several times, as if he were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incense-like smoke floated up to Rainsford’s nostrils.

Rainsford held his breath. The general’s eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze there, every muscle tensed for a spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay; a smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away, back along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

That’s good shit. And while, again, the characterization is workmanlike at best—Rainsford boils down to “uncurious but unyielding”—Connell does have a gift for Zaroff’s slippery, self-serving evil. Jaguars, the world-weary Zaroff complains, “[are] no match at all for a hunter with his wits about him, and a high-powered rifle” (emphasis mine). He’s a physical coward: he makes his hunts more unpredictable by going after men, who have cunning and reason, but he’s chasing murderous excitement, not true risk. He could keep the jaguars if he ditched the high-powered rifle. But he gives up killing clout only in the most technical and wishy-washy of ways: he’ll stick with “a pistol of the smallest caliber and range,” which is still more than his prey has on hand … but only until he’s losing. Then he’ll bring in the dogs.

At heart, he’s a cheat, and Connell uses that to amplify the suspense and make him more dangerous. If Rainsford eludes him for three days, will Zaroff actually take him to the mainland as he says? Probably not:

“And if I win—” began Rainsford huskily.

“I’ll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated if I do not find you by midnight of the third day,” said General Zaroff. “My sloop will place you on the mainland near a town.”

The general read what Rainsford was thinking.

“Oh, you can trust me,” said the Cossack. “I will give you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of course you, in turn, must agree to say nothing of your visit here.”

“I’ll agree to nothing of the kind,” said Rainsford.

“Oh,” said the general, “in that case—But why discuss that now?”

It’s a well-balanced problem story, with plenty of opportunities for tension and reversals. Rainsford must run (and Zaroff knows this jungle, when he does not). We can believe he has a chance of winning (he’s capable, coolheaded, and skilled), but he’s still outmatched (Zaroff has the gun, the dogs, and the hulking sidekick). And even if he survives, we can’t trust Zaroff to keep his word. Connell gives you plenty of reasons to keep reading.

More than anything else, though, the secret to the story’s success is that it can live outside of its form. It first existed in prose, but the prose is its vessel, not its essence. You can formally adapt “The Most Dangerous Game,” but you don’t have to: its core idea is so simple and versatile that you can simply take it. It’s like a song you can recognize even when it’s only hummed. You don’t need the exact words; you don’t need Rainsford and Zaroff. Kids can tell this to each other on the playground. It has enough narrative drive and enough concision to keep someone listening, and it develops so naturally that the teller won’t stumble over the essential details of what comes next. That’s all you need, and that’s why it will outlive us all.