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Forshadowing In The Most Dangerous Game By Richard Connell

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A man runs through the black jungle, encased in night, but aware of everything. Soon he will be followed; he is running for his life. The short story, “The Most Dangerous Game”, by Richard Connell is a tale revolving around a big game hunter named Rainsford. As the story begins, Rainsford and a few colleagues are on a yacht sailing through the Caribbean Sea. The night is late, and everyone but Rainsford retires. As Rainsford goes towards the rail to investigate the sound of gunshots, he falls into the sea. Rainsford tries to call to the captain, but isn’t heard and must swim to the closest island. He gets to the island and finds a mansion owned by a retired Cossack general and avid hunter, named General Zaroff. Rainsford quickly learns that the “game” the General hunts is human beings, and when Rainsford refuses to hunt with the general, he becomes the prey. In his short story “The Most Dangerous game,” Richard Connell uses foreshadowing and personification to create the mood of mystery and suspense.
Within this short story, foreshadowing is used to develop the mood by letting the reader’s anticipation build, and paralleling points later in the story to create a layer of mystery and leave the reader in suspense. In one early example of foreshadowing, Connell references an integral plot point, “Some wounded thing- by the evidence, a large animal- had thrashed about in the underbrush; ‘A twenty- two,’ he remarked. ‘That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal too. The

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