The Most Dangerous Game
Richard Connell
After falling of a yacht en route to do big game hunting in the Amazon, Sanger Rainsford finds himself at the mercy of the owner of Ship Trap Island whose ideas of hunting have shocked readers since the story was first published in 1924.
Major thematic elements: prey vs. predator; power dynamics; survival
Back to Browse by Title | Browse by Author
IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections
Place of publication: United States
Language: English
Era: 20th Century
Genre: Fiction
Author: Male
Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts
Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation
Full text, basic summaries, and overviews
The Most Dangerous Game | Full Text | Various Sources
From AmericanLiterature.com | Full text, but not ideal for printing | Read here
From Project Gutenberg Canada | Full text, better for printing | Read here
From Internet Archive | Full text, excellent for printing and includes space in margin for note taking | Read more
The Most Dangerous Game | Audiobook by Justin Franco | YouTube.com | 47:28
This audiobook of The Most Dangerous Game has a strong reader and excellent audio quality. In the video description, Franco includes two free resources—a background Prezi and an annotated copy of the text—that are listed on his Teachers Pay Teachers page.
Listen here
The Most Dangerous Game Study Guide | SparkNotes.com
The study guide from Spark Notes includes a summary, characters, literary devices, quotes, topics for deeper study, and the full text of the story.
Read more
The Most Dangerous Game Study Guide | Course Hero
Course Hero’s study guide includes overview and context, characters, plot summary and analysis, discussion of symbols and themes, and more.
Read more
The Most Dangerous Game | Wikipedia
This page is just about the short story, though it does include links and information about adaptations of the story.
Read more
About the author
Richard Connell | Biography | Wikipedia.com
Wikipedia’s page includes a short overview, a paragraph about his life and career, and then a list (often with links) to his works.
Read more
Articles & essays about “The Most Dangerous Game”
The Roaring 20s | American Experience | PBS
This PBS page has a slideshow of 11 photos which highlight important aspects of American culture during the 1920s. If students are having a hard time visualizing Rainsford and Zaroff’s world, these photos should help.
Read more
The Hunter’s Aim: The Cultural Politics of American Sport Hunters, 1880-1910 | Journal of Leisure Research | Daniel Justin Herman, Dept of History, Central Washington University | 2003
This essay covers a wide-range of topics under the umbrella of hunting and American culture, including imperialism and colonialism, racism and ethnicity, the impact of Theodore Roosevelt, and more.
Read more
Hunting The Most Dangerous Game | American Cinematographer | theasc.com
This article looks back at the production of the 1932 film version of The Most Dangerous Game. Probably most useful for teachers using The Most Dangerous Game as a cinema & literature text, but it’s an interesting read and could also work well as an extension text for students who want to learn more about the text, it’s reception, and it’s translation for the silver screen. Emphasis in the article is placed on the production of the film—creating sets, adding and developing characters, and adding to and reshaping the story’s text.
Read more
The History of Hunting as a Sport | MakeHeritageFun.com | Vedika Singhania | May 17, 2016
This article discusses the history of hunting, present-day hunting, hunting as a “necessary evil,” hunting and nature-based tourism, & hunting and preservation. The article isn’t without bias, but it does cover a good range of topics relevant to hunting, and could help students understand the context of “The Most Dangerous Game” — both today and in the early 20th century.
Read more
Being Sisyphus: The Mythological Basis for Connell’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ | The University of Rhode Island | Daniel E. Lees | 2013
This essay examines the allusions to classic mythology in The Most Dangerous Game. The essay as a whole might be too advanced for students, but there are great, very accessible paragraphs about Connell’s characterization of Rainsford and Zaroff within it.
Read more
Lesson plans and other teaching resources
Writing Summaries using The Most Dangerous Game | Lesson Plan by Teacher Comp
In this lesson, students learn elements of plot, identify and color-mark elements of plot in The Most Dangerous Game, use their notes to fill in a plot diagram, and then use that plot diagram to write a summary.
Read more | $3.00
Making Connections: The Most Dangerous Game | marsd.org
This 24-page resource includes a summary, note-taking guide, and the full text of the story with a Take Notes section in the margin for students to respond to various reading check questions.
Read more
The Most Dangerous Game Summary & Analysis | InterestingLiterature.com | Dr. Oliver Tearle, Loughborough University
This essay summarizes the short story in excellent detail and the provides an interesting and easy to read analysis of the short story. Analysis includes discussion of the context of the story’s original publication, the symbolic settings in the text, and the ways in which Rainsford and Zaroff both represent different qualities of the hunter.
Read more
