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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

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The Most Dangerous Game Theme Analysis

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The Most Dangerous Game

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The Value of Human Life

Despite their marked differences, Zaroff and Rainsford ascribe to similar worldviews. Both view humans as belonging to one of two categories: in Zaroff’s view, the weak or the strong, and in Rainsford’s view, “the hunters and the huntees” (1). For Zaroff, this worldview leads him to see sailors as “the scum of the earth” (8) who exist to give him pleasure. Zaroff acknowledges that strong humans, like him, have value, but weak ones do not. Even Ivan , Zaroff’s sole companion on the island, is expendable. He regrets Ivan’s death not because he valued him as a person but because he “would be difficult to replace” (14). After learning Zaroff’s beliefs about people, it comes as no surprise that he does not feel guilty killing them for his entertainment.

Connell uses Zaroff’s character to shock and outrage the reader. He is characterized as a ruthless sociopath with no regard for the innate value of human life. He justifies murder by categorizing the men he kills as animals. Zaroff’s character is clearly wrong, and readers have no problem identifying his behavior as evil.

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FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims around Kamala Harris and her campaign for the White House

Democrats are quickly rallying around Vice President Kamala Harris as their likely presidential nominee after President Joe Biden’s ground-shaking decision to bow out of the 2024 race.

Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024, during an event with NCAA college athletes. This is her first public appearance since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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The announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will seek the Democratic nomination for president is inspiring a wave of false claims about her eligibility and her background. Some first emerged years ago, while others only surfaced after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his bid for a second term.

Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: Harris is not an American citizen and therefore cannot serve as commander in chief.

THE FACTS: Completely false . Harris is a natural born U.S. citizen. She was born on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by The Associated Press.

Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone born on U.S. soil is considered a natural born U.S. citizen and eligible to serve as either the vice president or president.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” reads the amendment.

There is no question or legitimate debate about whether a citizen like Harris is eligible to serve as president or vice president, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.

“So many legal questions are really nuanced — this isn’t one of those situations,” Levinson told the AP on Monday.

Still, social media posts making the debunked assertion that Harris cannot serve as president went viral soon after Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and would back Harris for president.

“Kamala Harris is not eligible to run for President,” read one post on X that was liked more than 34,000 times. “Neither of her parents were natural born American citizens when she was born.”

False assertions about Harris’ eligibility began circulating in 2019 when she launched her bid for the presidency. They got a boost, thanks in part to then-President Donald Trump, when Biden selected her as his running mate.

“I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” the Republican said of Harris in 2019.

CLAIM: Harris is not Black.

THE FACTS: This is false. Harris is Black and Indian . Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, her mother, was born in southern India. Harris has spoken publicly for many years, including in her 2019 autobiography , about how she identifies with the heritage of both her parents.

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Despite ample evidence to the contrary, social media users are making erroneous claims about Harris’ race.

“Just a reminder that Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris isn’t black,” reads one X post that had received approximately 42,000 likes and 20,400 shares as of Monday. “She Indian American. She pretends to be black as part of the delusional, Democrat DEI quota.”

But Harris is both Black and Indian. Indeed, she is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. This fact is highlighted in her biography on WhiteHouse.gov and she has spoken about her ethnicity on many occasions.

Harris wrote in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” that she identifies with the heritage of both her mother and father.

“My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots,” she wrote. “Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness and appreciation for Indian culture.”

In the next paragraph, she adds, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters.” Harris again refers to herself as a “black woman” in the book’s next chapter.

CLAIM: Harris got her start by having an affair with a married man, California politician Willie Brown.

THE FACTS: This is missing some important context. Brown was separated from his wife during the relationship, which was not a secret.

Brown, 90, is a former mayor of San Francisco who was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982.

“Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in 2020 in the San Francisco Chronicle under the article title, “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?”

He wrote that he supported Harris’ first race to be San Francisco district attorney — just as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Harris, 59, was state attorney general from 2011-2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021, when she became vice president. She has been married to Doug Emhoff since 2014.

Harris’ critics have used the past relationship to question her qualifications, as Fox News personality Tomi Lahren did when she wrote on social media in 2019: “Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown.” Lahren later apologized for the comment.

Trump and some of his supporters have also highlighted the nearly three-decade old relationship in recent attacks on Harris .

CLAIM: An Inside Edition clip of television host Montel Williams holding hands with Harris and another woman is proof that Harris was his “side piece.”

THE FACTS: The clip shows Montel with Harris and his daughter, Ashley Williams. Harris and Williams, a former marine who hosted “The Montel Williams Show” for more than a decade, dated briefly in the early 2000s.

In the clip, taken from a 2019 Inside Edition segment , Williams can be seen posing for photographs and holding hands with both women as they arrive at the 2001 Eighth Annual Race to Erase MS in Los Angeles.

But social media users are misrepresenting the clip, using it as alleged evidence that Harris was Montel’s “side piece” — a term used to describe a person, typically a woman, who has a sexual relationship with a man in a monogamous relationship.

Williams addressed the false claims in an X post on Monday, writing in reference to the Inside Edition clip, “as most of you know, that is my daughter to my right.” Getty Images photos from the Los Angeles gala identify the women as Harris and Ashley Williams.

In 2019, Williams described his relationship with Harris in a post on X, then known as Twitter.

“@KamalaHarris and I briefly dated about 20 years ago when we were both single,” he wrote in an X post at the time. “So what? I have great respect for Sen. Harris. I have to wonder if the same stories about her dating history would have been written if she were a male candidate?”

CLAIM: Harris promised to inflict the “vengeance of a nation” on Trump supporters.

THE FACTS: A fabricated quote attributed to Harris is spreading online five years after it first surfaced.

In the quote, Harris supposedly promises that if Trump is defeated in 2020, Trump supporters will be targeted by the federal government: “Once Trump’s gone and we have regained our rightful place in the White House, look out if you supported him and endorsed his actions, because we’ll be coming for you next. You will feel the vengeance of a nation.”

The quote was shared again on social media this week. One post on X containing an image of the quote was shared more than 22,000 times as of Monday afternoon.

The remarks didn’t come from Harris , but from a satirical article published online in August 2019. Shortly after, Trump supporters like musician Ted Nugent reposted the comments without noting they were fake.

CLAIM: A video shows Harris saying in a speech: “Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today, so the future today will be as the past today as it is tomorrow.”

THE FACTS: Harris never said this. Footage from a 2023 rally on reproductive rights at Howard University, her alma mater, was altered to make it seem as though she did.

In the days after Harris headlined the Washington rally, Republicans mocked a real clip of her speech, with one critic dubbing her remarks a “word salad,” the AP reported at the time .

Harris says in the clip: “So I think it’s very important — as you have heard from so many incredible leaders — for us, at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights nonprofit whose president also spoke at the rally, livestreamed the original footage. It shows Harris making the “moment in time” remark, but not the “today is today” comment.

The White House’s transcript of Harris’ remarks also does not include the statement from the altered video. Harris’ appearance at the event came the same day that Biden announced their reelection bid .

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck .

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Helldivers 2’s biggest update yet, Escalation of Freedom, drops August 6

New enemies, mission objectives, difficulty levels, and more.

Welcome to the Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers. We’ve taken the time to gather feedback from our players on the front lines, and we’re bringing greater variety to our content. From missions and objectives to enemies and planets, we’re delivering lots of new content for both our veteran players and brand-new Helldivers on the battlefield. Get ready for our biggest update yet!

Our community continues to show us how strong we all are when united against the mindless Automatons and the scourge of the Terminid. As we stand here, on the eve of the Escalation of Freedom, we reflect on the 6 months since launch. We could never have predicted how far this game would go and how many Citizens would answer Super Earth’s call to arms!

We’ve watched our forces expertly handle every conflict and challenge we’ve thrown their way, from flying enemies to the Terminid Control System, to saving the children of Super Citizen Anne’s Hospital. Now for this major update, it’s time for us to give back something big to the community and welcome in even more players to the Helldivers universe.

Helldivers, this is escalating quickly.

Go on a Super Helldive

Go up against the new supersized bot fortresses.

Something that continues to amaze us is our players’ insatiable desire for more bugs, more bots, more liberation, and more destruction. We thought nine levels of Helldiving difficulties would be enough, but in the Escalation of Freedom we’re turning it up to 10… Combat Rating 10 that is.

CR 10: Super Helldive is our most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet, and we hope that this is going to give players the intensity they’re looking for on the battlefield. And with a great challenge comes greater rewards.

The larva retrieval mission has the Helldivers babysitting a bug.

But a new difficulty level isn’t the only thing the community wanted. We’ve also heard your desire for mission variation, which is why we’re bringing you new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both bots and bugs that offer brand new Super Sample rewards. These outposts will be heavily fortified, and require players to coordinate and strategize in order to take them out.

And if you’re new to Helldivers 2, you don’t have to worry about missing out on all the fun until you unlock Super Helldive, because many of our new mission objectives will be playable on other difficulty levels.

New Enemies & Dangerous Swamps

The Impaler returns!

Escalation of Freedom is unleashing some new threats to our liberty that will take some serious strategizing from the Helldivers to take down. 

Back by popular demand: the Impaler! This big guy from the original Helldivers creates some new challenges. No longer can you run from the bugs when the Impaler is around–big, imposing, and destructive, it demands to be dealt with.

Also new among the Terminid ranks is the Spore Charger. As if the regular old Charger wasn’t scary enough, the Spore Charger is shrouded in fog to obscure its location until it’s right up on you, Helldiver.

The new Spore Charger in the fog.

Lastly, the Terminid Alpha Commander, which is a supercharged Brood Commander that’s bigger, meaner, and doesn’t hesitate to call in other bugs for backup.

You thought the regular old Brood Commander was bad? Think again.

Don’t think we forgot about the Automatons. Their ranks are growing, too, with the addition of the formidable Rocket Tank, as well as some other bot surprises we’ll be throwing your way.

The Automaton uprising continues.

Explore the swamps but not as you know them, with rolling fog and the untamed flora, the blackened trees obscure the light and the air itself feels haunted. Keep your flashlight handy, as visibility is limited and light is key. The enemy could be hiding anywhere amongst the undergrowth.

Get spooked, Helldivers.

Under the Hood

The last addition I want to highlight about the Escalation of Freedom update is that we’re making changes to mitigate the problem of grief kicking in Helldivers 2. While it’s our hope that players engage with the game in good faith and sportsmanship, we do recognize that some players are using the team kicking to grief others.

To help improve this we have implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team’s loot from their previous session. All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged.

With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.

Along with this, we’re also releasing other quality of life upgrades with Escalation of Freedom, including major fixes to the social menu to make diving with your friends easier.

Overall, we think this escalation is going to be packed full of awesome additions, long-awaited improvements, and a ton of surprises to discover! Helldivers 2: Escalation of Freedom is launching on August 6!

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46 The Most Dangerous Game Essay Questions, Topics, & Examples

Polishing your thesis statement or topic sentence for The Most Dangerous game essay or writing the whole paper? Get an idea from the list gathered by our experts.

🏆 Best The Most Dangerous Game Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

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• Conflict in ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ by Connell Rainsford went through an internal conflict when he was in the ocean and had to keep stay focused by not panicking and realizing that his clothes were not helping his strokes and he ‘wrestled out […]
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‘Those About to Die’ Star Iwan Rheon on Why Tenax ‘Created a Monster,’ and How His ‘Game of Thrones’ Villain Ramsay Bolton Would Fare in the Roman Colosseum

By Hunter Ingram

Hunter Ingram

• ‘Presumed Innocent’ Star Peter Sarsgaard Talks Finale Twist and Defends Tommy: ‘He’s a F—ing Machine … I’m Surprised People Have Any Issue’ 2 days ago
• ‘Those About to Die’ Star Iwan Rheon on Why Tenax ‘Created a Monster,’ and How His ‘Game of Thrones’ Villain Ramsay Bolton Would Fare in the Roman Colosseum 1 week ago
• ‘Presumed Innocent’ Director on the Tense Courtroom Showdown Between Real-Life In-Laws Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard: ‘There Was a Safety and Trust and Love There’ 1 week ago

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the entire first season of “ Those About to Die ,” now streaming on Peacock.

In the underbelly of Rome in Peacock’s swords-and-sandals epic “Those About to Die,” you can call Tenax ( Iwan Rheon ) many things. Bookie, fixer, faction leader, patron saint of orphans. But by the end of the Season 1 finale, he’s assumed one more title, whether he likes it or not: emperor killer.

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While Tenax orders more than a few deaths over the course of the series — which was created by Robert Rodat, based on Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 novel — killing the emperor is, appropriately, a rubicon he can never uncross.

By handing Domitian the crown, though, Tenax is putting Rome at the mercy of a man who won’t be as practical and clear-headed about what drives him. This, after all, is the same man who mere minutes before watched with glee as his former lover was executed. The method of execution? He was strapped to the bow of a ship, and fed to crocodiles in the flooded amphitheater, before a cheering audience. Don’t forget, Domitian already had his tongue cut out as well.

Rheon says Tenax is under false assumptions that he may have doomed himself by committing himself to Domitian. But the time has passed for doubts to make much of a difference.

“You see in his eyes, Tenax is not sure this is manageable,” Rheon says of his character’s alarm about Domitian. “Essentially, he has created a monster. He has enabled a monster and put him in power. It is just about whether he can control him. Can he control him as he controlled Scorpus? Scorpus was a drunk, but genius charioteer. Domitian could have him killed in a second.

“I think Tenax is scared at the end, because he finds himself in a position he’s always wanted to be in, but the consequences of it are frightening.”

Speaking of being scared, the season comes to a close with Tenax admitting out loud that he fears, not Domitian, but the relationship he has developed with Cala (Sara Martins). Having entered into Tenax’s employ to save her enslaved children, Cala has never pretended her main motivation was anything other than to bring her family back home. But her increasingly important role as manager of Tenax’s betting business — and their undeniable chemistry — intertwines these two wayward people in ways they didn’t expect. Rheon says Cala brings out an almost child-like vulnerability in Tenax that he long-ago repressed to harden himself while living on the streets.

“She is probably the only person who is honest with him,” he says. “He doesn’t have friends. He’s a loner, a lone wolf. He doesn’t let people in, and he’s a brutal person because he doesn’t have to question himself morally. But here she is, and having a sort of companion is quite big for him. Especially someone who doesn’t lie, and whose motivations are completely pure. Everyone is playing a game, but she is not.”

“That last scene was a joy to do, and Sara is so wonderful,” Rheon says. “But the fact he doesn’t kill her is important. Any other time in his life or anyone else who betrays him, he kills them. Letting people live shows weakness. But that’s why he says, ‘You terrify me.’ He knows he needs her.”

But what does Tenax ultimately want? He has shown his aptitude for the business of chariot races and bloodsports. He has spies all over the city, many of them children looking to him as a father figure. He has also proven he is willing to get his own hands dirty to further his cause. But what is that cause?

“Respect is what he wants,” Rheon says. “He wants this aristocracy to respect him. There is something in him that needs that, like a father saying, ‘Well done, son.’”

That would make sense considering Tenax’s childhood-friend-turned-stalker Ursus (Daniel Stisen) revealed Tenax might be the son of the patrician that raised them as slaves and they later killed to escape. But, Rheon says, even more than nobility coursing through his veins, Tenax’s proximity to power in Emperor Domitian has him dreaming bigger by season’s end.

“As soon as he gets to the end of the season, he’s thinking, ‘I could be the emperor,’” he says. “And he would probably be a fantastic emperor, because he knows how to run things and make tough decisions. He is an intelligent guy who knows how to play the game. But first things first, he has to get himself consolidated. Perhaps he is a patrician, which means he could level up much easier. But there is the minor problem of Domitian. He has to manage him first.”

Can one manage a psychopath who is high on their first true taste of untapped power? Rheon would know better than most, having played a version of that as the chillingly volatile Ramsay Bolton on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” One of the most vicious and justly despised characters in all of the Seven Kingdoms, Ramsay makes some of Tenax’s darker deeds look like the actions of a good samaritan.

So who would win if the two characters Rheon played were dropped into the colosseum for a gladiatorial bout? Rheon is putting his money on the man with the patience to come out victorious.

“I think Tenax wins,” he says with a laugh, pondering the odds. “I think Ramsay would make a mistake. You certainly wouldn’t want to mess with Ramsay in any case, but I think Tenax has a cool head about him, and, at some point, would draw Ramsay in. Ramsay’s just an idiot, really. He’s a psychopath. He doesn’t have any empathy. But Tenax is very empathetic, which means something — even if he doesn’t really show it.

“It would be a good fight though.”

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The Most Dangerous Game

Rainsford's character in "the most dangerous game" sidney o. omulo 9th grade.

“The Most Dangerous Game” is a short story and thriller by Richard Connell, which takes place after World War II on a remote island. The story chronicles the misadventures of a distraught castaway, as he makes his way through a mad man’s playground, narrowly escaping death at each turn. General Zaroff, the castaway’s captor, forces Rainsford into a game of murder that ends in Zaroff’s demise. Rainsford, the protagonist, is an embodiment of our inner man, the beast that dwells just below our outer psyche, the part of us that others, even those held close, fails to see. Throughout the story, Rainsford’s beliefs, temperament, sense of self and ultimate state of consciousness morph as the story progresses, which makes him a hard to miss, dynamic character.

The most notable change in Rainsford is in his beliefs. Rainsford, an adept hunter, initially believes that animals experience no fear or recognizable emotion. He demonstrates this when he jubilantly states, “Who cares what a jaguar feels?”(11). He later insinuates that animals have no intelligence as he proudly declares, “Bah, they have no understanding” (11). Rainsford takes his egotistic beliefs and opinions further by ridiculing the animals he hunts and by partitioning his...

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News Analysis

An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart

The attack on former President Donald J. Trump comes at a time when the United States is already polarized along ideological and cultural lines and is split, it often seems, into two realities.

• Share full article

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents.

• Published July 14, 2024 Updated July 15, 2024

Follow the latest news on the Trump assassination attempt.

When President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention-seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader. The teary-eyed Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head and got on his knees to pray for him.

But the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.

The fact that the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Saturday night was two days before Republicans were set to gather in Milwaukee for their nominating convention inevitably put the event in a partisan context. While Democrats bemoaned political violence, which they have long faulted Mr. Trump for encouraging, Republicans instantly blamed President Biden and his allies for the attack, which they argued stemmed from incendiary language labeling the former president a proto-fascist who would destroy democracy.

Mr. Trump’s eldest son, his campaign strategist and a running mate finalist all attacked the political left within hours of the shooting even before the gunman was identified or his motive determined. “Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” wrote Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.

But the Trump campaign seemed to think better of it, and the post was deleted. A memo sent out on Sunday by Mr. LaCivita and Susie Wiles, another senior adviser, instructed Trump team members not to comment on the shooting.

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