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The Unexpected Killers in The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell and “The Child By Tiger” by Thomas Wolfe

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“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and “The Child By Tiger” by Thomas Wolfe are two short stories that have completely different plots, but have many similarities that relate them. Both stories deal with unexpected killers and have a twist that surprises the audience. These pieces make use of foreshadowing and address discrimination, but the characterizations of the protagonists are very different and they affect the readers in distinctive ways.
First, Thomas Wolfe and Richard Connell use foreshadowing in their stories to give the audience a glimpse of what is to come. Foreshadowing is a literary technique that subtly reveals events that are going to occur later in the story. In “The Child By Tiger,” Wolfe uses many signs to …show more content…

In addition to foreshadowing, “The Child By Tiger” and “The Most Dangerous Game” both address the issue of discrimination. In “The Child By Tiger,” it is clear that Prosser is a slave but craves to be considered as respectable as a white man. However, because of his skin color, he was not even allowed to attend church with the family that he worked for. The story stats that when Prosser “drove the Sheppertons to church on Sunday morning… he would come up to the side door of the church while the service was going on… and stand there humbly and listen during the course of the entire sermon” (Wolfe 157). His disappointment of having to stand outside of the church to worship is evident to Wolfe’s readers, and displays the harsh discrimination that eventually pushes Prosser to go on a killing spree. “The Most Dangerous Game” also displays discrimination in its plot. In a conversation with Rainsford, the antagonist Zaroff states that he only hunts “the scum of the earth… lassars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels” (Connell 7). This blunt discrimination against these different types of people shows the audience that Zaroff is after a certain type of prey. The discrimination used not only connects Connell’s and Wolfe’s stories, but it is also used in order to make a point to the audience that prejudice is a huge problem in the world.
While these stories have many similarities, they also do have some significant differences, including the characterization

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