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“The Most Dangerous Game” Narrative Essay

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Looking for The Most Dangerous Game essay examples? This paper analyzes the short story by Richard Connell. It explores The Most Dangerous Game themes & provides the story’s summary.

Introduction

• Summary of the Story
• The key theme

“The Most Dangerous Game” is a short story authored by Richard Connell published in 1924. It is a story about a hunter becoming the hunted. “The Most Dangerous Game” essay shall provide an analysis of the story. The main character Sanger Rainsford accompanied by his partner Whitney set out on a journey from New York to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The two are on a mission to hunt the Jaguar, a big cat in South America.

Summary of The Most Dangerous Game

The play notes here that Rainsford loves hunting to the extent that he calls it the best sport in the world. In the course of their discussion over their ability to hunt wild animals, they are terrified suddenly by gunshots and screams. This occurs at night.

The scare makes Rainsford fall off their boat into the Caribbean Sea in trying to rescue his pipe. The circumstance did not allow him to swim back to the ship. He then swims to an island, which is in the direction that the yells and gunshots had come from. This island also happens to be a Ship-Trap zone. On the Island, Rainsford finds two inhabitants living in a palatial mansion. General Zaroff is the owner of the island and an astute hunter.

The second person is Zaroff’s servant, who is deaf and mute. His name is Ivan. It is surprising that after the introduction, Zaroff has heard of Rainsford from the books he has read about him hunting leopards in Tibet, China. They then have dinner together. Zaroff’s explanation follows this to Rainsford on how he got bored with killing wild animals because the adventure did not bring challenges anymore.

His adventure surprises Rainsford, who, even after persuasion, refused to join. What happens when Rainsford refuses to hunt with Zaroff? Zaroff says that he now captures sailors whose ships are wrecked; he then sends them to the forest with food, dressed in full hunting regalia and a knife. The sailors now become his target and turn to hunt and kill them. Being a determined General, he sets his limits to three days. If by the third day neither Ivan, his hunting dogs nor himself have killed the prey, he lets them go.

However, his hunting skills had never allowed an escape to occur. Rainsford turns down the offer to join the hunting of human beings. Zaroff gives him two options. To become either the next prey to be hunted or Ivan whips him to death. Rainsford chooses the former.

The Most Dangerous Game Theme

In “The Most Dangerous Game,” dogs and Ivan play equally significant role in the plot. This is a dangerous game pitting Rainsford on one side and Zaroff’s entire team of Ivan and the dogs on the other side. It is the use of stamina and strength with the show of intelligence. Zaroff makes sure that Rainsford gets the standard treatment of a captive, including giving him food supplies and instructions. The challenge is risky but very intriguing. Rainsford starts by hiding his hunting tactics. He climbs a tree where he is very visible.

This serves to convince Zaroff that Rainsford is easy prey and immediately turns it into the game. The next flow of events proves that Rainsford is a guru in hunting. He sets a trap made of a massive log joined to a tripwire. The first casualty is Zaroff. His shoulder is injured, sending him back to the mansion to sleep. The trap he uses here, he calls it, a Malay man catcher. Day one is done, and Rainsford knows that he has two to go.

His trap on day two killed one of Zaroff’s hounds. This is a trap he nicknames the Burmese tiger pit. The third trap, a native Ugandan knife, kills his servant Ivan. Rainsford then throws himself over the cliff and swims back to the mansion to evade Zaroff. On returning home, the presence of Rainsford in his bed curtains causes Zaroff to salute him. Rainsford refuses this and challenges him for a fight. As the “The Most Dangerous Game” narrative essay shows, he is confident that he can handle him.

Rainsford considers the hunting of human beings as cold blood murder. The general takes the challenge. The challenge affects both whoever loses the duel would be fed to the dogs, and the winner will sleep on Zaroff’s bed. Rainsford expressed that he had never slept on a better bed before. This implies that he killed Zaroff.

“The Most Dangerous Game” essay proves that reading this play, we can see the conflict between man and wild animals. This appears to be acceptable in the story. In the beginning, Rainsford and his partner proudly talk about their experiences in hunting. They are also on a hunting mission to hunt a jaguar. Furthermore, Zaroff, who also explains to Rainsford how he was a good hunter of wild animals before he sort new challenges, has featured Rainsford in books for his hunting skills as read.

Zaroff introduces the second conflict that is between men. Zaroff launches his new adventure of killing people. He uses his wealth to prove his inhuman actions. He is chasing people to kill them like wild animals. This was, in fact, the cause of his death at the ending of the play.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game

Analysis of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 30, 2021

Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” is widely anthologized in both high school literature and college introductory fiction courses largely because it offers a fine illustration of many of the potential conflicts that an author can incorporate into an compelling plotline: man versus man, man versus nature, and man versus himself.

Initially set on board a steamer headed for South America, “The Most Dangerous Game” begins with a conversation between two hunters, Rainsford and Whitney, who are aboard the vessel and are nearing a dangerous stretch of water that shipping charts label as Ship Trap Island . Their discussion centers on their chosen sport, big game hunting, and whether wild animals have any fear when they are being stalked by humans.

Almost immediately the reader senses that Rainsford’s surroundings are threatening. The sea and the island’s negative reputation place him in jeopardy, which is heightened when he falls overboard while investigating the sound of three gunshots he hears from the deck of his ship.

Although he survives the fall, Rainsford is savvy enough to get to shore by following the direction suggested by the shots. However, upon his arrival at Ship Trap Island, the safety he anticipates is not evident; instead he is faced with a ragged jungle environment and evidence of a fierce struggle that has recently occurred there.

Richard Connell/AmericanLiterature.com

Ultimately, Rainsford makes his way inland and, to his surprise, he discovers a palatial chateau, which he initially feels is a mirage, but he eventually finds that the house is occupied by a General Zaroff, a military aristocrat with a deaf mute servant of extraordinary strength whose name is Ivan. Aware of Rainsford’s reputation for hunting expertise, Zaroff initially seems delighted to have him as a guest since he, too, considers himself a master of the hunt. Indeed, his feudal dining room is decorated with the heads of many of his animal kills, including elephants, tigers, and bears. As the two discover what they consider to be the most dangerous game animal, the reader begins to recognize that the general is far from humane in his pursuit of the sport.

Rather, as Zaroff recounts his career to Rainsford, it becomes clear that the general now finds lower animals less of a challenge. Bored with their ability to offer him competition, Zaroff had retreated to this isolated primitive jungle exclusively to hunt the only animal that reasons: men. Zaroff clearly expresses his belief that even his human prey are an inferior species—the weak of the world—but individuals whom he trains to make them competitive to his superior skills. He then offers the individual he hunts a game of cat and mouse. If Zaroff catches his prey, the individual loses (and dies); if the prey eludes him for three days, the individual is free to leave Ship Trap Island unharmed. However, such an escape has so far never been achieved by those whom he has hunted, and no one has succeeded in winning the game.

Clearly, after initially believing Rainsford’s conflict will be environmental in nature, readers now see that a man-versus-man conflict emerges as a primary emphasis of Connell. The intellectual and physical battle between the two men takes center stage, displacing the original struggle with the environment. Since Rainsford offers the general a much more challenging opponent than he has had previously, the game of wits is intriguing. For Zaroff, the hunt has become a plaything, and he toys with Rainsford as he tracks him nightly, at times intentionally letting him slip away from being captured and killed. Suddenly the word game no longer refers to animals but rather suggests an elaborate chess match whose loser forfeits his very life.

The story concludes with Rainsford forced to do battle with Zaroff. Though outnumbered (Zaroff has dogs and Ivan to help), Rainsford does not panic and uses the tricks of the hunting trade to outsmart his opponent. Nevertheless, the general discovers Rainsford during the first hunt and, preferring to extend the contest not to capture him, decides rather to enjoy what he believes will be his eventual triumph over a longer period. During the second encounter, Rainsford becomes more successful as he uses a Malayman-catcher at least to wound Zaroff. Thus the man-versus-man conflict intensifies, and the game becomes more complex. Though Rainsford claims the lives of both the general’s best hunting dog and Ivan, he is eventually trapped on a high cliff. Since retreat is impossible, he is then forced to seek refuge in the dangerous sea by jumping from his precarious location. While Zaroff believes he has again conquered even though he has not killed his prey personally, his opponent, Rainsford, returns later that night to claim victory, having proved successful not only in subduing his dangerous surrounding but in eluding his hunter and surviving for three days.

Surprisingly, as the story draws to a close, Rainsford is not content just to be free. Instead he proves that men (not wild animals) are indeed the most dangerous game by challenging his antagonist to a duel and winning. Though Connell deftly avoids showing Rainsford’s actual killing of his fellow man and his subsequent decision to feed the general’s body to his pack of hungry dogs, the author surely concludes that when pressed to desperation, man will resort to any means to stay alive. Consequently, it is evident that Rainsford, who initially revolted at the thought of violently attacking others, has struggled with his own value systems and eventually decided that self-preservation may require dire and even immoral action. His personal impulse toward morality at the beginning of the story is thus, at the story’s end, overcome by the necessity to survive, and his inner struggle introduces the third primary fictional conflict: man’s eternal struggle with himself.

Considered a plot-centered story, “The Most Dangerous Game” has rather static stereotypical characters including a noble heroic protagonist and a vicious and unsympathetic villain, but Connell’s ironic twist at the story’s end makes the story an appealing read, especially for those who prefer exciting series of events to complex character studies. It is a well-crafted narrative that lends itself well to basic analysis by younger and perhaps less experienced readers.

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A Summary and Analysis of Richard Connell’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Most Dangerous Game’ is a classic adventure story, first published in 1924. It is now the story for which its author, Richard Connell (1893-1949), is best-remembered, and critics and reviewers have drawn comparisons between ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ and Suzanne Collins’s bestselling Hunger Games series, because both narratives are about people hunting, and being hunted, in a life-or-death competition.

Plot summary

On a yacht in the Caribbean, Sanger Rainsford is a hunter famed for his skills, preparing for a hunting trip up the Amazon in South America with his friend Whitney, who tells him about some strange superstitions involving a nearby island.

That night, Rainsford hears gunshots and falls into the sea. He swims for the shore, and hears the strange cries of an animal he is unfamiliar with and realises it is being hunted. When he makes it to the shore, he collapses and falls asleep, but once he wakes he realises he is hungry and begins to search for people on the island he has washed up on.

What he discovers initially baffles him. There are cartridges left over from the hunt which he heard, but the hunter was using a small gun to hunt a large animal. So he goes on a hunt himself, following the footprints of the hunter until he sees lights and comes to ‘a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom’.

He knocks at the door of this chateau, and Ivan, a black-bearded giant of a man who cannot speak, opens the door to him. He goes to shoot Rainsford, who is saved when another man, General Zaroff, arrives. Zaroff, who is more cultivated than Ivan, has read one of Rainsford’s hunting books. He apologises to his guest for Ivan’s behaviour and provides Rainsford with food and a change of clothes. Both he and Ivan are Cossacks: Russian and Ukrainian horsemen known for their military skill.

Over dinner, Zaroff tells Rainsford that he hunts big game on the island. He also tells him that ordinary animals have ceased to be a challenge for him, so he has started hunting the one animal capable of reason: human beings. Because he has the power of reason, man is ‘the most dangerous game’ of all. The island is known as ‘Ship Trap’ because ships are often run aground on its shores, providing Zaroff with fresh ‘game’. If a man refuses to be part of the hunt, Zaroff turns him over to Ivan.

That night, Rainsford has difficulty getting off to sleep, and once he begins to doze he hears a pistol shot in the jungle. The next day, he demands to leave the island, but Zaroff tells him that they haven’t gone hunting yet – and Rainsford is going to be the next game Zaroff hunts. If Rainsford can survive for three days in the jungle, Zaroff will allow him to leave the island, on condition that Rainsford tell nobody about Zaroff’s hunt. Rainsford reluctantly accepts these terms.

He is given some supplies and leaves the house with a three-hour head start on Zaroff, who then begins to hunt him. He tries various tricks to outwit his enemy, doubling back on his own tracks to obscure his path, and hiding up in a tree. But Zaroff finds him with ease, though refuses to announce that he has done so. Rainsford realises that Zaroff is toying with him.

He decides to lay a trap for Zaroff involving a tree which, if disturbed, will fall on him. However, Zaroff’s lightning-quick reflexes save him from death, and only his shoulder is injured. He tells Rainsford he will go and have his wound dressed before returning to the hunt.

Coming upon an area of quicksand, Rainsford lays another trap: a pit containing sharp stakes, concealed by a mat of weeds and branches covering the hole. But one of Zaroff’s dogs activates the trap instead. Rainsford hears the baying of the rest of the hounds, and attaches his knife to a tree, hoping that Zaroff will be wounded by it. Instead, the knife kills Ivan.

He now has only one chance: to jump into the sea, escaping the island, and hope for the best. Zaroff, meanwhile, is back at his chateau, cursing the fact that Rainsford has escaped. He retires to bed but, when he switches on a light, there is a man waiting behind the curtains: Rainsford. Zaroff tells him he has won the game, but Rainsford tells him that he is still a ‘beast at bay’ and the hunt is not over yet. Zaroff accepts this, and the two men prepare to fight.

That night, Rainsford sleeps in Zaroff’s bed.

Connell’s story ends with Rainsford, the hunted, vanquishing his hunter, Zaroff, and sleeping in the bed of the man who had stalked him as his prey. But ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ concludes on a decidedly ambiguous note. What happened during that ellipsis (‘“One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford.”…’)? And why did Rainsford, having jumped into the sea, then head back to the chateau in order to kill Zaroff?

We are invited to presume that Rainsford has fought, and killed, Zaroff and claimed the latter’s bed as his victory prize. But the fact that he chooses Zaroff’s bed, out of the many beds in the vast chateau, raises some interesting questions. Does he plan to replace Zaroff as the chief hunter of the island, luring those unwitting sailors to the ‘Ship Trap’ of the island in order to use them for sport? Has he got a taste for the ultimate hunt and does he now, too, plan to hunt ‘the most dangerous game’, man?

Although ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ is a well-paced and engaging adventure story, we should not let this fact lead us to conclude that this is all the story is: an action-packed piece of entertainment. For in some respects, Connell’s tale can be analysed as a kind of allegory for the predatory and cutthroat elements of human nature.

Some sixty-five years before ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ was written, Charles Darwin had shown how all animals are locked in a bloody and desperate struggle for survival: one animal hunts another for food, two animals of the same species fight to the death over a potential mate, animals tears each other apart in their competition for limited food sources.

Although Darwin’s initial book on evolution, On the Origin of Species (1859), did not discuss man, the implications of his theory of natural selection were plain enough to most readers. Humankind is not separate from other animals, but a part of the animal kingdom. Man is just a more cultivated and civilised animal, who is capable of making and wearing fine clothes (as Zaroff does) and enjoying fine food and champagne (again, see Zaroff).

But underneath this ‘cultivated’ veneer – and it is worth remembering that Connell’s third-person narrator uses this very word to describe Zaroff’s voice – man is still an animal, with primal drives. And these drives include the urge to hunt and kill prey.

The setting of ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ also bears out this interpretation of the story as an allegory for man’s primal nature beneath his ‘civilised’ exterior. By having his adventure tale take place in the deepest jungle on a South American island, Connell sends his New Yorker protagonist, symbolically, back into a more primitive and barbaric past. At one point during dinner, Zaroff comments to his guest that they ‘do our best to preserve the amenities of civilization here’; by implication, this is an uncivilised place by its very nature.

Both Zaroff and Rainsford represent different aspects of the hunter. Both men are highly skilled at what they do, but for Zaroff, hunting is a ‘game’ (as the double meaning of the story’s title cleverly conveys, man is ‘the most dangerous game’ but he is also playing ‘the most dangerous game’). It is something he enjoys so much that he is prepared to place himself in danger, turning men into his prey precisely because their reasoning capacity makes them ‘dangerous’, as he tells Rainsford.

For Zaroff, then, the danger – the risk to his own safety – is part of the thrill of hunting. And it would be easy to argue that, in Rainsford, he finally meets his match. But this is not quite the case. In fact, he easily tracks down Rainsford, despite the New Yorker’s best attempts to cover his tracks (literally) before taking refuge up in a tree.

Zaroff quickly finds him, however. He could have dispatched his prey there and then, but his undoing is not Rainsford’s cunning as such, but his own hubris : Zaroff thinks he will be able to outsmart and vanquish the other man every time, and so leaves him in the tree for the time being. By playing with his prey in this way, Zaroff provides Rainsford with the chance to escape, and he does this by jumping into the sea and then finding his way back to the chateau.

In the last analysis, then, Connell’s story is about modern man as a primitive hunter with the primal drive to turn others into his prey. It would be easy to cast Zaroff as the more bloodthirsty man and Rainsford as the unwitting hunter in the story (he starts off as prey and must become predator in order to survive), but as the story progresses, Rainsford becomes more and more violent himself: killing, first, one of Zaroff’s dogs, then Ivan, and finally, Zaroff himself.

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The Most Dangerous Game

Richard connell, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The Most Dangerous Game

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Summary: “the most dangerous game”.

Written in 1924, Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” has achieved fame as a popular short story worldwide. The story is an iconic tale that questions the value of human life and offers a commentary on the morality of man and instinct versus reason . It has sparked numerous adaptations and inspired other pieces of fiction, from poems and novels to several films and TV series.

As the story opens, Sanger Rainsford , a game hunter, is on a yacht traveling to the Amazon to hunt the largest cat of the region—the jaguar. As they pass an island called Ship-Trap Island on a dark night, Rainsford and his friend Whitney stand on the ship deck and discuss the superstitions sailors hold about the mysterious Caribbean island. They also discuss their impending hunt, considering the effects of man on the animal kingdom and how the hunted animals must feel. They agree that they are lucky to be the hunters, not the hunted. After Whitney turns in, Rainsford hears gunshots as the boat passes the island shore, and upon shifting closer to investigate, he falls overboard. When he realizes that he cannot swim back to the boat, he decides to swim toward the island, where he washes up on shore and falls into a deep sleep .

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Upon waking, Rainsford takes in the rough and wild jungle landscape. As he starts picking his way along the shore, he sees signs of a struggle—blood and crushed foliage—along with an empty .22 cartridge. He finds it odd that such a small caliber round would be used against what appears from the evidence to be a sizeable animal. Rainsford follows boot prints on the ground and eventually comes upon a large chateau high on a bluff.

Rainsford’s knock on the door is met by a large, black-bearded man named Ivan , pointing a revolver. He soon meets the chateau owner, General Zaroff , who instructs Ivan to stand down and explains Ivan is deaf and without speech. Zaroff is also a big game hunter, and after Rainsford explains his situation, Zaroff gives him a large meal and a place to rest. Over an exceptionally delicious dinner, Zaroff and Rainsford have a long, engaging discussion about hunting and animals. However, amid his hospitality, Zaroff reveals that hunting began to bore him because it no longer held the challenges of wit it once had. He now hunts much bigger and more cunning game—the sailors whose ships crash into the island. He gives them food, rest, and survival training then sends them out into the jungle with some supplies and provisions. Then the hunt begins. Zaroff tells Rainsford that if a target can survive for three days without being killed by him, Zaroff will let him go—however, none of his past victims have lasted that long.

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Rainsford is shocked and turns down Zaroff’s invitation to accompany him hunting that evening. Instead, Rainsford goes to bed but is so unsettled by Zaroff’s hobby that he cannot sleep. As dawn breaks, he hears the shot of a pistol in the distance and knows that Zaroff has killed the man he was hunting.

The next afternoon, Rainsford is informed that he will have a three-hour head start before Zaroff begins hunting him. If Zaroff has not killed him by midnight of the third day, he promises to take Rainsford by boat to the mainland. On the first day, Rainsford creates a confusing trail for Zaroff and eventually climbs a tree. However, Zaroff finds him quickly and taunts him by smoking a cigarette at the base of the tree and sparing him on purpose to prolong the hunt for his own entertainment. The general then goes home to prepare for a more serious fight the next day. On day two, Rainsford fashions a “man-catcher” trap, which Zaroff triggers as he steps on it unknowingly, getting hit in the shoulder and going home injured to rest for the final day. He is pleased with Rainsford’s ingenuity and again chooses to spare Rainsford’s life to keep the hunt going. On the third day, Zaroff brings his pack of hunting dogs. Rainsford shows additional wit and skill by creating other traps—firstly, a hole in the ground that captures and kills one of Zaroff’s dogs, then a knife trap that kills Ivan.

As the chase intensifies, Rainsford jumps off a cliff into the sea. Zaroff investigates and deduces that Rainsford is dead. He is disappointed that Rainsford would end the game by committing suicide. The general returns home and goes up to his bedroom, locking the door behind him; however, Rainsford is there, hiding in plain sight. Rainsford reveals that he swam around to the other side of the island, snuck into the chateau, and climbed up to Zaroff’s bedroom.

Zaroff is impressed with Rainsford, exclaiming that he won the game. However, Rainsford does not take it so lightly—he intends to fight Zaroff to the death. The story ends with the line, “He’d never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided” (15), implying that Rainsford has killed Zaroff.

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“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell: A Critical Analysis

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell first appeared in print in 1924, captivating readers when Collier’s, a prominent magazine of the era, published it.

Introduction: “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

Table of Contents

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell first appeared in print in 1924 , captivating readers when Collier’s , a prominent magazine of the era, published it. This suspenseful short story centers on Rainsford, a celebrated big-game hunter, whose shipwreck on a seemingly uncharted island takes a horrifying turn. He encounters the enigmatic General Zaroff, who introduces Rainsford to a depraved hunting game with a shocking twist: the prey is human. Connell’s masterful storytelling explores profound themes of survival, the morality of hunting, and the unsettling blurring of lines between hunter and hunted, leaving readers on the edge of their seats.

Main Events in “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

• Shipwrecked! Rainsford and Whitney find themselves adrift after their yacht crashes on an unknown island “[The yacht] was absolutely shattered. … It had come up like a toy boat against a house-wall”
• A Mysterious Figure: Rainsford follows a distant gunshot and encounters the unsettling Ivan, who leads him to a strange mansion “‘Come, follow.'”
• General Zaroff’s Welcome: Rainsford meets the eccentric General Zaroff, who offers them hospitality at his island home “He was a tall man, powerfully built, with a thick head of white hair and a pointed brown beard. … His eyes were as green and hard as emeralds”
• The Unveiling: Zaroff reveals his collection of hunting trophies, hinting at a dark secret “‘Let me show you my trophies.'”
• The Shocking Truth: Rainsford discovers Zaroff’s deranged hunting game: humans are the prey “The General had turned me into the hunted!”
• A Desperate Escape: Rainsford flees into the night, vowing to survive “He sprang through the window, head first, without hesitation”
• Living Off the Land: Rainsford utilizes his hunting skills to find food and shelter “He knew the artistry of making snares, of setting traps”
• Ivan on the Hunt: Zaroff unleashes his loyal servant, Ivan, to track Rainsford “The hairy arm that had thrust itself out of the jungle had gripped Rainsford’s wrist in a vise of steel”
• Turning the Tables: Rainsford sets cunning traps throughout the island, outsmarting his pursuers “Rainsford had calculated this. He had expected something of the kind”
• A Face-Off at the Swamp: Rainsford and Zaroff confront each other in a deadly struggle within the treacherous swamp “Rainsford raised his rifle against the embankment. The general’s eyes blazed. … In the general’s hand was a hunting knife”
• Zaroff’s Demise: Rainsford outsmarts and overpowers Zaroff using the island’s dangers “The swamp was his ally; the hideous, dripping thing that squelched and oozed around him was on his side”
• A Trophy Room Reclaimed: Rainsford takes over the mansion, symbolically claiming victory “He stood there in the center of the room and looked hard -for a long, long time – at the trophies on the walls”
• Facing the Unknown: Rainsford emerges from the island a changed man, uncertain of his rescue “He had killed a man, but doing so had saved himself”
• A Haunting Echo: As a ship approaches, Rainsford hears an echo of Zaroff’s chilling words “The laughter, the triumphing laughter, rose higher and higher until it became a peal that rang through the dripping trees”
• The Island’s Legacy: Rainsford’s experience leaves him forever marked by the island’s horrors “I imagine his smile as he turned his back and disappeared into the jungle.”

Literary Devices in “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

Characterization in “the most dangerous game” by richard connell, major characters:.

• Protagonist of the story, an experienced big-game hunter who initially embodies the callousness and indifference toward the animals he hunts.
• “The best sport in the world,” Rainsford is portrayed as a man who believes in the superiority of humans over animals, seeing hunting as a noble pursuit.
• Initially, he’s portrayed as confident and unfeeling, considering the feelings of his prey irrelevant.
• However, as the story progresses and he becomes the hunted, his character evolves. He is forced to confront the terror and brutality he once inflicted upon his prey.
• “I refuse to believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life.”
• The antagonist, a sophisticated, aristocratic Russian hunter who has grown bored with hunting animals and now hunts humans for sport.
• Zaroff is characterized by his calm demeanor, intelligence, and twisted sense of morality. He sees himself as superior to other men and thus entitled to hunt them.
• “But no animal can reason,” he says, justifying his preference for hunting humans. He views his victims as challenging prey, more deserving of his skills as a hunter.
• Despite his refinement, Zaroff is also depicted as ruthless and devoid of empathy. He casually explains his hunting of humans to Rainsford without any sense of remorse.
• “The weak of the world were put here to give the strong pleasure.”

Minor Characters:

• Zaroff’s deaf and mute assistant, characterized by his immense strength and unquestioning loyalty to Zaroff.
• Though not given much dialogue or depth, Ivan serves as a menacing presence, enforcing Zaroff’s will without question.
• “He is a Cossack,” explains Zaroff, indicating Ivan’s origin and implying his brutish nature.
• Rainsford’s friend and fellow hunter, whose philosophizing about the hunted’s perspective prompts the initial discussion about the morality of hunting.
• Though he doesn’t appear for long in the story, Whitney’s brief dialogue sets the stage for Rainsford’s eventual transformation.

Major Themes in “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

Writing style in “the most dangerous game” by richard connell.

• Vivid Imagery: Connell employs vivid imagery to create a sense of the ominous atmosphere on Ship-Trap Island: “Darkness was palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.”
• Suspenseful Tone: The author maintains a suspenseful tone throughout the story, keeping readers on edge as they follow Rainsford’s ordeal: “The softness of the island was pounded out of him.”
• Foreshadowing: Connell uses foreshadowing to hint at the danger awaiting Rainsford, such as when the ship’s captain mentions “this place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir”: “The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island’.”
• Dialogues: Dialogues are concise but revealing, providing insight into characters’ personalities and motivations, as seen in General Zaroff’s chilling conversation with Rainsford: “I refuse to believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life.”
• Suspenseful Pacing: The pacing is skillfully managed to heighten tension, particularly during Rainsford’s hunt for Zaroff: “Rainsford forced himself up and out of the water. The cries of the hunted man stopped.”
• Symbolism: Connell uses symbolism, such as the predatory nature of the hunt, to explore deeper themes about human nature: “The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees.”
• Irony: Irony is employed to underscore the story’s themes, such as when Rainsford becomes the hunted despite being an acclaimed hunter himself: “The general smiled. ‘It is a very great pleasure and honor to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.'”
• Economy of Language: Connell utilizes concise yet impactful language to convey significant events and emotions: “The thing came with a bound, and Rainsford fired.”
• Psychological Depth: The author delves into the psychological aspects of the characters, particularly Zaroff’s twisted sense of morality and Rainsford’s survival instincts: “Ivan was an incredibly strong fellow, but he was like a child in Rainsford’s hands now.”
• Theme of Morality: Connell explores the theme of morality, posing questions about the ethics of hunting and the value of human life: “Hunting? General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder.”

Literary Theories and Interpretation of “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

Topics, questions, and thesis statements about “the most dangerous game” by richard connell, short questions/answers about/on “the most dangerous game” by richard connell.

• Question: How does the setting contribute to the atmosphere of suspense in “The Most Dangerous Game”?
• Answer: The eerie setting of Ship-Trap Island, with its dense jungle and foreboding mansion, adds to the sense of isolation and danger in the story. Connell describes the island as having a “thick warm blackness,” creating a palpable atmosphere of suspense (Connell, 1924). This setting serves as the stage for Rainsford’s harrowing ordeal, heightening the tension as he becomes the prey in Zaroff’s deadly game.
• Question: What role does foreshadowing play in “The Most Dangerous Game”? Answer: Foreshadowing in the story hints at the danger awaiting Rainsford on Ship-Trap Island. When the ship’s captain warns Rainsford about the island’s ominous reputation, it foreshadows the perilous events to come (Connell, 1924). Additionally, Zaroff’s introduction and initial conversation with Rainsford subtly suggest the twisted nature of his character and his sinister intentions (Connell, 1924).
• Question: How does the character of General Zaroff embody the theme of elitism in “The Most Dangerous Game”?
• Answer: General Zaroff’s belief in his superiority as a hunter reflects the theme of elitism in the story. He sees himself as part of a privileged class, with the “weaker” humans serving as his prey (Connell, 1924). Zaroff’s statement, “You do not know how much I have longed to have an antagonist worthy of me,” underscores his sense of superiority and entitlement (Connell, 1924). This portrayal critiques the dangers of unchecked privilege and the potential for oppression when one group asserts dominance over another.
• Question: How does the theme of survival instinct manifest in “The Most Dangerous Game”?
• Answer: Throughout the story, Rainsford’s survival instinct evolves as he adapts to the challenges of being hunted by Zaroff. Initially confident in his skills as a hunter, Rainsford experiences fear and desperation as he confronts the reality of his situation (Connell, 1924). His determination to survive drives him to employ cunning strategies and rely on his instincts for self-preservation. This theme underscores the primal nature of survival and the lengths to which individuals will go to ensure their own survival in extreme circumstances.

Literary Works Similar to “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

“ The Lottery ” (1948) by Shirley Jackson:

• Similar to “The Most Dangerous Game” in building suspense and exploring darkness beneath normalcy
• Delves deeper into psychological horror, social conformity, and blind tradition

“Runaway” (1974) by Alice Munro

• Shares themes of isolation, danger, and resourcefulness with “The Most Dangerous Game”
• Focuses on protagonist’s psychological transformation and introspection

“The Veldt” (1953) by Ray Bradbury

• Explores consequences of desires and technology, like “The Most Dangerous Game”
• Utilizes science fiction to examine psychological effects on families

“ The Necklace ” (1884) by Guy de Maupassant

• Explores consequences of deception and social class, like “The Most Dangerous Game”
• Features misguided choices leading to ironic consequences

“The Signal-Man” (1865) by Charles Dickens

• Evokes similar atmosphere of mystery and suspense
• Leans into supernatural elements, unlike “The Most Dangerous Game”‘s thrilling adventure

Suggested Readings about/on “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

• Connell, Richard. “The most dangerous game.” Stories for Men . Routledge, 2017. 88-107.
• Connell, Richard. The most dangerous game . Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2023.
• Thompson, Terry W. “A Tale of Two Centuries: Richard Connell’s” The Most Dangerous Game”.” The Midwest Quarterly 59.3 (2018): 318-251.
• Thompson, Terry W. “Potemkin Redux: Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game”.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 32.4 (2019): 248-252.
• https://americanliterature.com/author

Representative Quotations from “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

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The Most Dangerous Game

By richard connell, the most dangerous game quotes and analysis.

"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford. "For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar." "Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?" "Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney. "Bah! They have no understanding" 4

This early conversation between Whitney and Rainsford foreshadows the events to come. Rainsford will soon experience the position of the jaguar as he is hunted by Zaroff on Ship-Trap island. The brief exchange highlights Rainsford's outlook on the sport of hunting. He expresses a lack of empathy for the plight of the hunted. Over the course of his experiences, his disposition changes remarkably.

Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building-- a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows. 10

Rainsford's first sight of Zaroff's secluded mansion foreshadows the sea of contradictions that is Zaroff. In the midst of a dark, unforgiving terrain lies a man-made masterpiece. Much like this setting, Zaroff is a cultured man. He eats, dines, and dresses like the highest members of society. On the other hand, he has a sinister, dark side that leads him to hunt men for sport.

The general filled both glasses, and said: "God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger, my father said.... My whole life has been one prolonged hunt." 17

In this passage Zaroff reveals some of the ideological underpinnings that drive his desire to hunt. As is evidenced by the passage, he truly believes that he was made specifically for this single pastime. His passion and exuberance for the sport is all-consuming. Zaroff's identity is hinged on this sole quality, a fact that makes his hunting of men all the more believable. This passage is also indicative of his role as the antagonist of the story.

"I wanted an ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said: 'What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was of course: 'It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.'" 20

Zaroff's hunting of men is highly logical, as shown from the above passage. His sound thought process makes his desire to hunt Rainsford all the more terrifying. This passage is also somewhat of a moral statement as it demonstrates the way that humans, through higher cognitive function, can revert back to a more heathen state. It is a paradox that haunts the text.

"I have electricity. We try to be civilized here." "Civilized? And you shoot down men?" A trace of anger was in the general's black eyes, but it was there for but a second, and he said, in his most pleasant manner: "Dear me, what a righteous young man you are! I assure you I do not do the thing you suggest. That would be barbarous. I treat these visitors with every consideration. They get plenty of good food and exercise. they get into splendid physical condition. You shall see for yourself tomorrow." 23

This passage is filled with a great deal of irony. Zaroff presents the hunting of men as a purely civilized process for the prisoners. He implies a certain degree of fairness to the sport when in fact he is robbing his captives of their freedom and their dignity as men. They have no choice as toward whether or not they want to participate. This demonstrates Zaroff's twisted logic and his somewhat paradoxical definition of civilization.

The bed was good and the pajamas of the softest silk, and he was tired in every fiber of his being, but nevertheless Rainsford could not quiet his brain with the opiate of sleep. He lay, eyes wide open. Once he thought he heard stealthy steps in the corridor outside his room. He sought to throw open the door; it would not open. He went to the window and looked out. His room was high up in one of the towers. The lights of the chateau were out now, and it was dark and silent, but there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its wan light he could see, dimly, the courtyard; there, weaving in and out in the pattern of shadow, were black, noiseless forms; the hounds heard him at the window and looked up, expectantly, with their green eyes. 26

Rainsford's observations on the first night of his stay at Ship-Trap island include numerous examples of metaphorical language. The contrast between soft, light, and civilized with dark wilderness continues throughout his stay on the island. It is only in the dark of night that Rainsford is able to see the true nature of the mansion. The fancy, polished exterior of the mansion is a facade for the barbarous activities that take place under the cover of night. Although the hunt has yet to begin, Rainsford is already trapped by the hunting dogs. Their eyes watch him as he surveys his surroundings, preventing him from making any attempt at an escape.

"You'll find this game worth playing," the general said enthusiastically. "Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not without value, eh?" 29

Zaroff clearly envisions the match against Rainsford as one that is even. In reality, however, it is not. For one, Zaroff makes it evident that he is willing to hunt to the death. His passion for hunting is so profound that he sees nothing awry with putting everything he has into it. Rainsford, on the other hand, is an unwilling participant who is in many ways largely unprepared for the hunt. Although he is an accomplished big-game hunter, he has never had to play the role of prey, and he lacks Zaroff's familiarity with the island. That Zaroff finds the match an equal one only builds on Rainsford's understanding of his twisted psyche.

"I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable." 31

This short sentence provides an example of zoomorphism. Throughout the short story both Zaroff and Rainsford compare themselves to animals. Rainsford, through these comparisons, begins to see himself in the position of a prey animal. Such a connection helps him empathize with the plight of those he has hunted in the past. This represents a change in frame of mind from the very early parts of the story where he tells his friend Whitney that jaguars "have no understanding."

Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true, but the truth was as evident as the sun that had by now pushed through the morning mists. The general was playing with him! The general was saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror. 34

This passage marks the first time that Rainsford is truly terrified by his plight. The odds stacked against him finally manifest themselves as a response to Zaroff's mind games. In addition, this short inner monologue provides another example of zoomorphism. It also brings to light that the hunting of men is perhaps more cruel than the hunting of animals for the simple fact that humans are able to think rationally. The wave of human emotion resulting from this ability to reason is overwhelming for Rainsford.

The general made one of his deepest bows. "I see," he said. "Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford."... He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided. 41

These last few sentences of the story provide a somewhat cryptic ending. Implied in Rainsford's statement is his victory over Zaroff. Given that Zaroff's last words were indicative of a fight, one is led to believe that Rainsford has killed Zaroff and won his bed. In a more metaphorical sense, Rainsfords comment can be read as a literary sigh of relief. He is no longer subject to the terrifying hunt. The lack of a fully fleshed out ending allows the reader to speculate and imagine what could have happened.

The Most Dangerous Game Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Most Dangerous Game is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

“He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.” (Paragraph 207) What is the overall effect of the last line of the story?

This line tells us that Rainsford won his final showdown with Zaroff. This effectively ends this classic man vs man story.

The Most Dangerous Game Study Sync question #1

A- He is a superstitious person who believes in rumors and legends.

Which of the following infers about Whitney is best supported by the beginning of the story

a.he is a superstitious person who believes in rumors and legends

Study Guide for The Most Dangerous Game

The Most Dangerous Game study guide contains a biography of Richard Connell, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Most Dangerous Game
• The Most Dangerous Game Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Most Dangerous Game

The Most Dangerous Game essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell.

• Rainsford's Character in "The Most Dangerous Game"
• The Three Hunters
• The Most Dangerous Game: A Hunt For Morality
• Analyzing Suspense in ‘The Most Dangerous Game’
• Characterization in “The Most Dangerous Game”

Lesson Plan for The Most Dangerous Game

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Most Dangerous Game
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Most Dangerous Game Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Most Dangerous Game

• Introduction
• Real-life parallels
• Adaptations

Champions League final most 'dangerous' game: Madrid's Ancelotti

London (AFP) – Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti warned his players the Champions League final is the most "dangerous" game in football on the eve of their clash with Borussia Dortmund at Wembley.

Issued on: 31/05/2024 - 19:09

The Italian, who has won the competition as a coach a record four times, said Los Blancos were afraid the trophy could escape them.

Madrid, record 14-time winners, are firm favourites for the clash against the Bundesliga side.

"A Champions League final is the most important game but also the most dangerous," Ancelotti told a news conference Friday.

"We have to enjoy being here, but knowing it can go wrong because we are close to the most important thing in football -– winning a Champions League -- but having the fear this can escape us.

"Things have to go very well, you need to be lucky too, success is very close and so the worry begins tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon."

Real Madrid captain Nacho said he was feeling confident but nervous.

"We've got more nerves than in any other moment of the season," admitted Madrid captain Nacho.

"We're humans, it's a calm week for (some people) but for the players it's not. It's special, and that makes it not calm."

Veteran midfielder Luka Modric said despite Madrid's strength in contrast to Dortmund, he was approaching the match as if it were an even battle.

"Everyone thinks we are big favourites, but we don't think about it like that," said the Croatian.

"It's 50-50, we're playing a big team that has had a magnificent season in the Champions League."

Nacho and Modric, along with Toni Kroos and Dani Carvajal, would reach six career Champions League wins with a victory over Dortmund, levelling all-time leader and former Madrid great Paco Gento.

"It was hard to imagine we’d get to this moment but we are here, very happy and enjoying this moment," said Modric.

"I hope tomorrow we can take this step further, as a team and have six European Cups would be something big."

'Something special'

Madrid came from behind to beat Bayern Munich in the semi-finals and have a remarkable ability to turn games around in Europe when it seems like they are defeated.

"We prefer to take the lead if it's possible," said Modric.

"But we've shown many times this year and before, that when things don't go well we fight until the end.

"We always find a way, we're capable of turning the game around. We keep having this mentality, this commitment and fight, but like I said, we’d prefer to take the lead."

Ancelotti said Madrid's ability to come back from the dead "has happened so many times it's not chance".

"It's something special... it could be the history, the quality, the tradition, the character," he mused.

The coach confirmed goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois would start the final ahead of Andriy Lunin, resolving the main selection query ahead of the game.

"Lunin had the flu and hasn't travelled with the team, tomorrow he will travel and will be on the bench -- Courtois will play tomorrow," said Ancelotti.

Belgian stopper Courtois returned from a long-term knee injury earlier in May and has kept four clean sheets in four appearances since.

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The Big AI Risk Not Enough People Are Seeing

Beware technology that makes us less human.

“Our focus with AI is to help create more healthy and equitable relationships.” Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and executive chair of the dating app Bumble, leans in toward her Bloomberg Live interviewer. “How can we actually teach you how to date?”

When her interviewer, apparently bemused, asks for an example of what this means, Herd launches into a mind-bending disquisition on the future of AI-abetted dating: “Okay, so for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge, and you could share your insecurities. ‘I just came out of a breakup. I have commitment issues.’ And it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself. And then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people. If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges.” When her audience lets out a peal of uneasy laughter, the CEO continues undeterred, heart-shape earrings bouncing with each sweep of her hands. “No, no, truly. And then you don’t have to talk to 600 people. It will then scan all of San Francisco for you and say, These are the three people you really ought to meet. ”

What Herd provides here is much more than a darkly whimsical peek into a dystopian future of online dating. It’s a window into a future in which people require layer upon layer of algorithmic mediation between them in order to carry out the most basic of human interactions: those involving romance, sex, friendship, comfort, food. Implicit in Herd’s proclamation—that her app will “ teach you how to date”—is the assumption that AI will soon understand proper human behavior in ways that human beings do not. Despite Herd’s insistence that such a service would empower us, what she’s actually describing is the replacement of human courtship rituals: Your digital proxy will go on innumerable dates for you, so you don’t have to practice anything so pesky as flirting and socializing.

Read: America is sick of swiping

Hypothetical AI dating concierges sound silly, and they are not exactly humanity’s greatest threat. But we might do well to think of the Bumble founder’s bubbly sales pitch as a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of a world of algorithms that leave people struggling to be people without assistance. The new AI products coming to market are gate-crashing spheres of activity that were previously the sole province of human beings. Responding to these often disturbing developments requires a principled way of disentangling uses of AI that are legitimately beneficial and prosocial from those that threaten to atrophy our life skills and independence. And that requires us to have a clear idea of what makes human beings human in the first place.

In 1977, Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born philosopher, vagabond priest , and ruthless critic of metastatic bureaucracies, declared that we had entered “the age of Disabling Professions.” Modernity was characterized, in Illich’s view, by the standardization and professionalization of everyday life. Activities that were once understood to be within the competencies of laypeople—say, raising children or bandaging the wounded—were suddenly brought under the purview of technical experts who claimed to possess “secret knowledge,” bestowed by training and elite education, that was beyond the ken of the untutored masses. The licensed physician displaced the local healer. Child psychologists and their “cutting edge” research superseded parents and their instincts. Data-grubbing nutritionists replaced the culinary wisdom of grandmothers.

Illich’s singular insight was that the march of professional reason—the transformation of Western civilization into a technocratic enterprise ruled by what we now call “best practices”—promised to empower us but actually made us incompetent, dependent on certified experts to make decisions that were once the jurisdiction of the common man. “In any area where a human need can be imagined,” Illich wrote , “these new professions, dominant, authoritative, monopolistic, legalized—and, at the same time, debilitating and effectively disabling the individual—have become exclusive experts of the public good.” Modern professions inculcate the belief not only that their credentialed representatives can solve your problems for you, but also that you are incapable of solving said problems for yourself. In the case of some industries, like medicine, this is plainly a positive development. Other examples, like the ballooning wellness industry, are far more dubious.

If the entrenchment of specialists in science, schooling, child-rearing, and so on is among the pivotal developments of the 20th century, the rise of online dating is among the most significant of the 21st. But one key difference between this more recent advancement and those of yesteryear is that websites such as Tinder and Hinge are defined not by disabling professionals with fancy degrees, but by disabling algorithms . The white-coated expert has been replaced by digital services that cut out the human middleman and replace him with an (allegedly) even smarter machine, one that promises to know you better than you know yourself.

Faith Hill: ‘Nostalgia for a dating experience they’ve never had’

And it’s not just dating apps. Supposed innovations including machine-learning-enhanced meal-kit companies such as HelloFresh, Spotify recommendations, and ChatGPT suggest that we have entered the Age of Disabling Algorithms as tech companies simultaneously sell us on our existing anxieties and help nurture new ones. At the heart of it all is the kind of AI bait-and-switch peddled by the Bumble CEO. Algorithms are now tooled to help you develop basic life skills that decades ago might have been taken as a given: How to date. How to cook a meal. How to appreciate new music. How to write and reflect. Like an episode out of Black Mirror , the machines have arrived to teach us how to be human even as they strip us of our humanity. We have reason to be worried.

As conversations over the dangers of artificial intelligence have heated up over the past 18 months—largely thanks to the meteoric rise of large language models like ChatGPT—the focus of both the media and Silicon Valley has been on Skynet scenarios. The primary fear is that chat models may experience an “intelligence explosion” as they are scaled up, meaning that LLMs might proceed rapidly from artificial intelligence to artificial general intelligence to artificial superintelligence (ASI) that is both smarter and more powerful than even the smartest human beings. This is often called the “fast takeoff” scenario, and the concern is that if ASI slips out of humanity’s control—and how could it not—it might choose to wipe out our species, or even enslave us.

These AI “existential risk” debates—at least the ones being waged in public —have taken on a zero-sum quality: They are almost exclusively between those who believe that the aforementioned Terminator-style dangers are real, and others who believe that these are Hollywood-esque fantasies that distract the public from more sublunar AI-related problems, like algorithmic discrimination , autonomous weapons systems , or ChatGPT-facilitated cheating . But this is a false binary, one that excludes another possibility: Artificial intelligence could significantly diminish humanity, even if machines never ascend to superintelligence, by sapping the ability of human beings to do human things.

The epochal impact of online dating is there for all to see in a simple line graph from a 2019 study . It shows the explosive growth of online dating since 1995, the year that Match.com, the world’s first online-dating site, was launched . That year, only 2 percent of heterosexual couples reported meeting online. By 2017, that figure had jumped to 39 percent as other ways of meeting—through friends or family, at work or in church—declined precipitously.

Besides online dating, the only way of meeting that increased during this period was meeting at a bar or restaurant. However, the authors of the study noted that this ostensible increase was a mirage: The “apparent post-2010 rise in meeting through bars and restaurants for heterosexual couples is due entirely to couples who met online and subsequently had a first in-person meeting at a bar or restaurant or other establishment where people gather and socialize. If we exclude the couples who first met online from the bar/restaurant category, the bar/restaurant category was significantly declining after 1995 as a venue for heterosexual couples to meet.” In other words, online dating has become hegemonic. The wingman is out. Digital matchmaking is in.

But even those selling online-dating services seem to know there’s something unsettling about the idea that algorithms, rather than human beings, are now spearheading human romance. A bizarre Tinder ad from last fall featured the rapper Coi Leray playing the role of Cupid, perched on an ominously pink stage, tasked with finding a date for a young woman. A coterie of associates, dressed in Hunger Games chic, grilled a series of potential suitors as Cupid swiped left until the perfect match was found. These characters put human faces on an inhuman process.

Leif Weatherby, an expert on the history of AI development and the author of a forthcoming book on large language models, told me that ads like this are a neat distillation of Silicon Valley’s marketing playbook. “We’re seeing a general trend of selling AI as ‘empowering,’ a way to extend your ability to do something, whether that’s writing, making investments, or dating,” Weatherby explained. “But what really happens is that we become so reliant on algorithmic decisions that we lose oversight over our own thought processes and even social relationships. The rhetoric of AI empowerment is sheep’s clothing for Silicon Valley wolves who are deliberately nurturing the public’s dependence on their platforms.” Curtailing human independence, then, is not a bug, but a feature of the AI gold rush.

Of course, there is an extent to which this nurtured dependence isn’t unique to AI, but is an inevitable by-product of innovation. The broad uptake of any new technology generally atrophies the human skills for the processes that said technology makes more efficient or replaces outright. The advent of the vacuum was no doubt accompanied by a corresponding decline in the average American’s deftness with a broom. The difference between technologies of convenience, like the vacuum or the washing machine, and platforms like Tinder or ChatGPT is that the latter are concerned with atrophying competencies, like romantic socializing or thinking and reflection, that are fundamental to what it is to be a human being.

Read: AI has lost its magic

The response to our algorithmically remade world can’t simply be that algorithms are bad, sensu stricto. Such a stance isn’t just untenable at a practical level—algorithms aren’t going anywhere—but it also undermines unimpeachably positive use cases, such as the employment of AI in cancer diagnosis . Instead, we need to adopt a more sophisticated approach to artificial intelligence, one that allows us to distinguish between uses of AI that legitimately empower human beings and those—like hypothetical AI dating concierges—that wrest core human activities from human control. But making these distinctions requires us to re-embrace an old idea that tends to leave those of us on the left rather squeamish: human nature.

Both Western intellectuals and the progressive public tend to be hostile to the idea that there is a universal “human nature,” a phrase that now has right-wing echoes . Instead, those on the left prefer to emphasize the diversity, and equality, of varying human cultural traditions. But this discomfort with adopting a strong definition of human nature compromises our ability to draw red lines in a world where AI encroaches on human territory. If human nature doesn’t exist, and if there is no core set of fundamental human activities, desires, or traits, on what basis can we argue against the outsourcing of those once-human endeavors to machines? We can’t take a stand against the infiltration of algorithms into the human estate if we don’t have a well-developed sense of which activities make humans human , and which activities—like sweeping the floor or detecting pancreatic cancer —can be outsourced to nonhuman surrogates without diminishing our agency.

One potential way out of this impasse is offered by the so-called capability approach to human flourishing developed by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum and others. In rejection of the kind of knee-jerk cultural relativism that often prevails in progressive political thought, Nussbaum’s work insists that advocating for the poor or marginalized, at home or abroad, requires us to agree on universal “basic human capabilities” that citizens should be able to develop. Nussbaum includes among these basic capabilities “being able to imagine, to think, and to reason” and “to engage in various forms of familial and social interaction.” A good society, according to the capability approach, is one in which human beings are not just theoretically free to engage in these basic human endeavors, but are actually capable of doing so.

As AI is built into an ever-expanding roster of products and services, covering dating, essay writing, and music and recipe recommendations, we need to be able to make granular, rational decisions about which uses of artificial intelligence expand our basic human capabilities, and which cultivate incompetence and incapacity under the guise of empowerment. Disabling algorithms are disabling precisely because they leave us less capable of, and more anxious about, carrying out essential human behaviors.

Of course, some will object to the idea that there is any such thing as fundamental human activities. They may even argue that describing behaviors like dating and making friends, critical thinking, or cooking as central to the human condition is ableist or otherwise bigoted. After all, some people are asexual or introverted. Others with mental disabilities might not be adept at reflection, or written or oral communication. Some folks simply do not want to cook, an activity which is historically gendered besides. But this objection relies on a sleight of hand. Identifying certain activities as fundamental to the human enterprise does not require you to believe that those who don’t or can’t engage in them are inhuman, just as embracing the idea that the human species is bipedal does not require you to believe that people born without legs lack full personhood. It only asks that you acknowledge that there are some endeavors that are vital aspects of the human condition, taken in the aggregate, and that a society where people broadly lack these capacities is not a good one.

Without some minimal agreement as to what those basic human capabilities are—what activities belong to the jurisdiction of our species, not to be usurped by machines—it becomes difficult to pin down why some uses of artificial intelligence delight and excite, while others leave many of us feeling queasy.

What makes many applications of artificial intelligence so disturbing is that they don’t expand our mind’s capacity to think, but outsource it. AI dating concierges would not enhance our ability to make romantic connections with other humans, but obviate it. In this case, technology diminishes us, and that diminishment may well become permanent if left unchecked. Over the long term, human beings in a world suffused with AI-enablers will likely prove less capable of engaging in fundamental human activities: analyzing ideas and communicating them, forging spontaneous connections with others, and the like. While this may not be the terrifying, robot-warring future imagined by the Terminator movies, it would represent another kind of existential catastrophe for humanity.

Whether or not the Bumble founder’s dream of artificial-intelligence-induced dalliances ever comes to fruition is an open question, but it is also somewhat beside the point. What should give us real pause is the understanding of AI, now ubiquitous in Big Tech, that underlies her dystopian prognostications. Silicon Valley leaders have helped make a world in which people feel that everyday social interactions, whether dating or making simple phone calls, require expert advice and algorithmic assistance. AI threatens to turbocharge this process. Even if your personalized dating concierge is not here yet, the sales pitch for them has already arrived, and that sales pitch is almost as dangerous as the technology itself: AI will teach you how to be a human.

Mike Lupica: Yankees’ Aaron Judge is back to…

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Subscriber only, mike lupica: yankees’ aaron judge is back to being the most dangerous slugger in baseball.

Daly wasn’t just talking about O’Neal’s talent on this day, and what a wonder to behold he was because of his size and strength, he was talking about O’Neal’s appeal, which has extended all the way into his career on television and in the media.

“This country has always liked great big action heroes,” Daly said.

It’s a comparison that has been made before, but might as well be made right now, because of the month Aaron Judge just had for the Yankees , his return to what his real job is supposed to be, which means Great Yankee. It is Judge who is that kind of great big action hero for baseball, because of his size in a sport where he does stand out like Shaq; and because of an ability to hit baseballs so hard he does everything except split them in half.

Judge and the Yankees, who haven’t lost a series in the month during which he hit 14 home runs and knocked in 27, were in San Francisco on Friday night to play the Giants. So, it’s very much worth remembering that there was at least a chance that Judge could have ended up with the Giants when he became a free agent after the 2022 season when he hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth ever had in one season, or Roger Maris, or Mickey Mantle. So, of course, Judge showed up in San Francisco and hit two more out of the park.

We’ll never know how strongly Judge considered leaving, or what it would have taken for him to finally leave the Yankees and leave New York and go back to California, the state in which he grew up. But there was at least a chance. Maybe if Judge had wanted to play things all the way out, he could have gotten even more money from the Giants than the $360 million over nine years that he got from the Yankees. But it never got that far. The Yankees signed him to the contract to which they should have signed him before that ’22 season and saved themselves a ton of money in the process.

Judge stayed with the Yankees. He came back and then he got hurt again. That has been part of his Yankeeography, too, all the injuries he’s endured, even though a couple of the big ones — broken hand, torn ligament in toe — weren’t due to his big body breaking down, just bad luck. He missed two months last June after he ran into that door at Dodger Stadium and when he came back, he could still hit big flies. But in the end, it was a lost season for him and even more of a lost season for the Yankees. He still hit 37 homers in 106 games, and feel free to game those numbers out over a full season, but the Yankees ended up 82-80 and so once again there was no chance for Judge to be a Great Yankee in October.

Now, he has come roaring back the way he has since he was hitting .197 with six homers almost one month ago exactly. Now, he came into the weekend with over half as many home runs as he hit all last season by the first of June. In the world of Shohei Ohtani, who got off to the best start of his career, and in a season when Juan Soto has made the kind of difference he’s made for the Yankees batting ahead of Judge, it is No. 99 who has once again become the most dangerous at-bat in this world, on what might turn out to be the best Yankee team on which he has ever played.

“A special player doing special things,” is the way Aaron Boone described Judge after he’d hit another home run on Thursday night against the Angels.

“That’s why he’s the captain,” Carlos Rodon said after the same game.

“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Judge said. “Like I’ve been saying, it doesn’t matter how you start. You’re always going to have good months, bad months. You just try to stay consistent and it’s all going to work itself out. It’s been a good month with a lot of wins, so I’m happy about that. We’ll keep it rolling in June.”

In addition to everything else Judge did in May, hitting all those home runs and raising his batting average 80 points on his way into Oracle Park on Friday night, he also had a total of 26 extra-base hits across the month, the most for a Yankee since Joe DiMaggio had 31 in July of 1937.

He kept saying he would be fine when he didn’t look anything like himself in April, and Soto was the one doing the most to carry the Yankee offense. Then he started to hit and doesn’t look as if he is going to stop anytime soon. And we are reminded what he looks like when he is blessed with good health, and once again makes you think that the very next at-bat is the one when he is going to try to hit another ball to the moon.

And his body, at least so far and fingers crossed, has withstood him playing as much center field as he has. There is no guarantee that this will be a workable plan over the long haul. Judge would get a lot more time at DH if Giancarlo Stanton, who has no real position at this stage of his career, weren’t around, but Stanton is still very much around, is still a home run threat himself, and isn’t going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.

For now, and happily, Judge remains the face of the Yankees, the heir to Derek Jeter not just as captain but as the most popular player they have. There is no telling how long his prime will last, and how long his body will stand up, but we should appreciate it, in full, while we can. Remember: Judge turned 32 in April. Like so many other baseball stars, you have to know he is being paid for what he will do over the early part of his contract, and not the player or hitter he will be at the end of it.

Still: We have been reminded lately exactly what the Yankees have in Judge, what we all have as his career continues to play out in real time. Aaron Judge. Great Yankee. Again. Scott Boras called Soto a “centurion” the other day. Let’s see No. 22 of the Yankees ever have a year like Aaron Judge already had in ’22.

KYRIE CHANGES THE SUBJECT, GREAT TO HAVE NAOMI BACK & METS NEED TO EMBRACE THE POLAR BEAR …

There is another high-profile athlete doing pretty well in the month of May, and at the same age as Aaron Judge, and that is Kyrie Irving .

He is playing at a level, both of basketball and creativity, that only a handful of guards in his sport can fully understand.

At his best, Irving is that good.

And sure is proving that as long as you do perform like this, on the biggest possible stage, you have the ability to change the subject on all the times in your career when you got in your own way, or just plain acted like a bonehead.

The media didn’t do that to him.

Irving did it to himself.

Just because he’s a great teammate now to Luka Doncic doesn’t mean he always was, in Boston and in Brooklyn.

There’s one other thing worth mentioning, as everybody talks about what a perfect wing man he is to Doncic:

This is the second time in his career when he’s the wing man to the best player in the entire sport, the same way he was with LeBron in Cleveland.

It doesn’t diminish what he’s doing, or the way he’s playing.

But you have to say it’s nice work if you can get it.

One more thing about the Mavs:

Their coach, Jason Kidd, looks like as brilliant a point guard as he ever was, even just standing on the sideline.

It was a pretty cool thing the other day at the French Open to see Naomi Osaka look as if she is all the way back, even if she couldn’t finish the job against Iga Swiatek in what was the match of the year so far in women’s tennis.

Here is a pro tip for the people in charge of the Mets, if they’re even considering trading Pete Alonso, on his way to being the greatest home run hitter they’ve ever had:

Mets fans like the Polar Bear much better than they like the people in charge of the Mets these days.

It was announced the other day that 57-year-old Mike Tyson was postponing his fight with Jake Paul because of an ulcer, and I was frankly kind of surprised that it wasn’t gout.

There is nothing that Gerrit Cole could have done so far for the Yankees that Luis Gil hasn’t.

I was waiting for grief counselors to actually show up in the Fox News studio after the verdict.

It’s always a fluid situation with this particular title, but for now poor Megyn Kelly has become the Queen of Unintended Self-Parody.

It’s only taken a couple of months, but if Soto doesn’t think it’s a strike I don’t, either.

No one would have thought this at the start of the NBA season, or even halfway through this NBA season.

But the best possible NBA Final is the one we’re about to get.

Can’t we just have Charles and Kenny and Ernie and Shaq move over to ESPN for Mavs vs. Celtics?

More in Sports

Coach Emma Hayes makes successful debut with US women’s national team in 4-0 win over South Korea

Mets lose to Diamondbacks, 10-5, after retiring Darryl Strawberry’s number

Darryl Strawberry details his heart attack, expresses regret for leaving Mets as team retires his No. 18: ‘I will always be a Met’

Champions League final: Real Madrid seals 15th European Cup after 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund

Champions League final most 'dangerous' game: Madrid's Ancelotti

R eal Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti warned his players the Champions League final is the most "dangerous" game in football on the eve of their clash with Borussia Dortmund at Wembley.

The Italian, who has won the competition as a coach a record four times, said Los Blancos were afraid the trophy could escape them.

Madrid, record 14-time winners, are firm favourites for the clash against the Bundesliga side.

"A Champions League final is the most important game but also the most dangerous," Ancelotti told a news conference Friday.

"We have to enjoy being here, but knowing it can go wrong because we are close to the most important thing in football -– winning a Champions League -- but having the fear this can escape us.

"Things have to go very well, you need to be lucky too, success is very close and so the worry begins tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon."

Real Madrid captain Nacho said he was feeling confident but nervous.

"We've got more nerves than in any other moment of the season," admitted Madrid captain Nacho.

"We're humans, it's a calm week for (some people) but for the players it's not. It's special, and that makes it not calm."

Veteran midfielder Luka Modric said despite Madrid's strength in contrast to Dortmund, he was approaching the match as if it were an even battle.

"Everyone thinks we are big favourites, but we don't think about it like that," said the Croatian.

"It's 50-50, we're playing a big team that has had a magnificent season in the Champions League."

Nacho and Modric, along with Toni Kroos and Dani Carvajal, would reach six career Champions League wins with a victory over Dortmund, levelling all-time leader and former Madrid great Paco Gento.

"It was hard to imagine we’d get to this moment but we are here, very happy and enjoying this moment," said Modric.

"I hope tomorrow we can take this step further, as a team and have six European Cups would be something big."

- 'Something special' -

Madrid came from behind to beat Bayern Munich in the semi-finals and have a remarkable ability to turn games around in Europe when it seems like they are defeated.

"We prefer to take the lead if it's possible," said Modric. 

"But we've shown many times this year and before, that when things don't go well we fight until the end.

"We always find a way, we're capable of turning the game around. We keep having this mentality, this commitment and fight, but like I said, we’d prefer to take the lead."

Ancelotti said Madrid's ability to come back from the dead "has happened so many times it's not chance".

"It's something special... it could be the history, the quality, the tradition, the character," he mused.

The coach confirmed goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois would start the final ahead of Andriy Lunin, resolving the main selection query ahead of the game.

"Lunin had the flu and hasn't travelled with the team, tomorrow he will travel and will be on the bench -- Courtois will play tomorrow," said Ancelotti.

Belgian stopper Courtois returned from a long-term knee injury earlier in May and has kept four clean sheets in four appearances since.

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Canine Health Information

Chocolate toxicity: what should i do if my dog eats chocolate.

One of the most common toxicities in dogs is caused by chocolate ingestion. Dogs cannot metabolize chocolate in the same way people can, so keeping chocolate or products containing caffeine in a secure location out of your dog’s reach is essential. The amount ingested that can cause toxicity depends on the size of the dog and the type of chocolate, with darker and more bitter chocolates being the most toxic. If your dog accidentally ingests chocolate, contact an emergency veterinarian immediately.

Two toxic components to dogs found in chocolate are caffeine and theobromine, which predominately cause stimulation of the central nervous system and heart. They also act as diuretics, which can quickly lead to dehydration. Dogs may also be at risk for developing gastrointestinal distress or even pancreatitis because many chocolate products are high in fat and sugar.

The amount of theobromine and caffeine in a chocolate product varies, but generally, the darker the chocolate, the higher the risk to dogs. The potential for toxicity is highest in cocoa powder, followed by unsweetened (baker’s) chocolate, semisweet and sweet dark chocolate, milk chocolate and cocoa bean hulls. For example, one ounce of milk chocolate per pound of a dog’s body weight can be deadly compared to unsweetened baking chocolate, where as little as 0.1 ounces per pound of a dog’s body weight may be lethal. For this reason, even ingesting small amounts, especially in a smaller dog, should be treated as an emergency.

Clinical Signs

The clinical signs seen vary based on the amount of chocolate ingested and the dog's size but may occur within 2-12 hours after ingestion. Clinical signs can last 12-36 hours, sometimes longer in severe toxicities. The signs of chocolate toxicity may include the following:

• Increased thirst and urination
• Restlessness
• Fast breathing
• Increased heart rate or irregular heart rhythm
• Hyperexcitability
• Incoordination

Dogs are most commonly diagnosed with chocolate toxicity after a history of known ingestion and physical exam findings. It is helpful if you know the amount and type of chocolate your dog consumed to help determine their overall risk. Your veterinarian may recommend blood work or additional testing depending on their clinical signs.

Treatment for chocolate toxicity depends on the clinical signs displayed by the animal. If a patient has life-threatening clinical signs, those will be managed first. Otherwise, treatment involves decontamination with medication to induce vomiting, even if it has been a few hours after ingestion, since chocolate tends to absorb slowly. Most patients require hospitalization.

Treatment for chocolate toxicity may include any of the following:

• Induced vomiting
• Administering oral activated charcoal
• Antinausea medications and GI protectants
• Medications to stop tremors
• Medications to prevent irregular heart rhythms
• Medication to stop seizures
• Urinary catheterization or frequent walking to encourage urination

The outcome of chocolate toxicity depends on the amount and type ingested, the dog’s weight and how promptly treatment was initiated. Delaying treatment from the time a dog eats chocolate can worsen the associated clinical signs and prognosis. Darker and more bitter chocolates are more toxic to dogs, but all forms of chocolate carry some risks. Dogs with mild signs or those that ingested small amounts generally have a good prognosis with prompt treatment. The prognosis is less favorable for dogs with severe clinical signs like seizures or collapse.