“And something had come to lifeIt was a kind of shadow, a poisonous blackness filled with bewildered loathing. something hateful and unspeakable in the souls of men.” An apparent introduction is made in the three works, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, The Child by Tiger by Thomas Wolfe, and The Destructors by Graham Greene; the unwelcome but necessary introduction to the sinful nature of mankind, to evil without limits, and without cause. When confronted with the presence of evil around them, the characters react in very different ways. A few triumph, one just stands in awe.
In The Most Dangerous Game Mr. Rainsford, at first, tries to shrug off a fellow sailor’s belief of a nearby ‘dark’ island by saying “Pure imagination . . . One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship’s company with his fear.” The sailor replies with haunting faith, “Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing – with wavelengths, just as sound and light have.
An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil.” When Rainsford comes to believe the crucial meaning of his friends’ words, it is too late; he is already in the midst of the very place that was spoken of. Appalled at first, by faced with no other choice than to confront the very source of evil, General Zaroff, face to face, Rainsford realizes the danger of his position and takes what he is dealt right in stride. He was now the wanted prey of the most dangerous of hunters. “He had not been entirely clear-headed when the chateau gates snapped shut behind him. His whole idea at first was to put distance between himself and General Zaroff.
. . Now he had got a grip on himself, had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the situation.” Mr. Rainsford, an experienced hunter himself, had found himself in a position he probably had never imagined before. This kind of hunting was new to him, for this time the quest was for him and his pursuer was of the most wicked species; the devil, so to speak.
“Is there anything a man don’t stand to lose when the devil wants to take it all away?” To try an out run, out fox and altogether put an end to the ‘devil’ was the task, and Rainsford did it the only way he knew how; by being the poacher and the quarry, setting traps while taking flight, and leaving no traces behind to be followed. After eluding General Zaroff for a wearing three days, Rainsford had won, according to the rules of General Zaroff, but that did not satisfy him in the least. “I congratulate you,” the General said. “You have won the game.” Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said in a low, hoarse voice.
“Get ready, General Zaroff.” And he did win, he was the champion in the game between good and evil, the most dangerous of all games. Mr. Spangler, as he is referred to in The Child by Tiger, was brought more abruptly into the realization that man is born with the heavy burden of iniquity on his shoulders. Although still a child, Spangler did realize that the man he and all of his friends looked up to, the man that knew how to do everything, had a strange air about him. Spangler noted in the beginning of the story, “He went to softly, at too swift a pace.
He was there upon you sometimes like a cat. Looking before us, sometimes, seeing nothing but the world before us, suddenly we felt a shadow at our backs and, looking up, would find that Dick was there. And there was something in the night. We never saw him come or go.” Spangler and his friends, Randy and Nebraska, didn’t quite know what to thank of Dick. He was devoted to his master and deeply religious, he seemed a good man.
After all, he read his bible every night. Spangler and his friends had trouble understanding Dicks’ passion and obsession over the bible. “We tried to laugh it off and make jokes about it. But .
