A number of themes are presented in "The Most Dangerous
Game".
You might choose to write about how
irony becomes a theme. The title is the first example of
irony in the story, working on two levels. The title is ironic because it has two
meanings. (Rainsford is the game being hunted and Zaroff, in a way, thinks of the hunt
as a serious game, to be played and won.)
Additional
example of irony as a theme can be found in the repeated motif of "the hunter becoming
the hunted". This happens to Rainsford and it happens to
Zaroff.
Furthermore, Rainsfored's attitude regarding
killing humans becomes ironic in the end. He had protested against the idea of hunting
people, calling it murder. When the "game" is finally over, Rainsford takes a human
life, killing Zaroff.
Zaroff's murder, therefore, is not self-defense,
as it would have been before Rainsford won the game. It is either an act of revenge or a
killing for sport.
Other
themes you might write on relate to violence, the value of human life, and
the ethics of hunting.
If hunting humans for kicks is murder, Connell
asks, then how does this differ from hunting
animals?
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