The World Is Made up of Two Classes, the Hunters and the Huntees

In the most dangerous game General Zaroff is the perfect Psychopath. After getting bored hunting animals, he began hunting humans, he gives the choice, be hunted for three days and go free if you survive, or be whipped by death. Zaroff passion for hunting eventually prompted him to hunt men, the most cunning and challenging prey he could find.

Zaroff is an insane, heartless and psychopathic man with a thirst to hunt human beings. “Oh” said the General, “Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quay with which can match my wits”. But there was one small trait of the general that made Raisford uncomfortable, whenever he looked up from his plate he found the general studying him, appraising him narrowly. That creepy feeling is Zaroff sizing Rainsford up as his net prey.

Zaroff has the skills to hunt. He knows how to hunt very well, Zaroff has come to associate strength with animals and skill and reason with humans. “And hunting, remember, had been my life. I have heard that in America businessmen often go to pieces when they give up the business that has been their life. “When I was only five years old he gave me a little gun, specially made in Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with.” This is what you call a “childhood history violence”, and while Zaroff lived in different times for sure, the gun toting toddler activities do seem to have made an impression on him.

General Zaroff needed a challenge. He’s killed every type of animal. But something was missing, he didn’t have a challenge, and so he came up with a new plan hunt the only animal with reason, humans. “Simply this hunting had ceased to be what you call a sporting proposition, it had become two easy. There is no greater bore than perfection.” “If I wish to hunt, why should I not? I hunt the scum of the earth, a thoroughbred horse or hound is worth more than a score of them.” Clearly Zaroff has an issue with being bored. He believes that humans are equal competitors.

It seems that he prefers hunting humans because they can reason, but he only wants to hunt low class humans because then he doesn’t have to care about killing them. He considers Human hunting to merely be a game for his own amusement, and he sets up the island as an arena for the unlucky soul who crosses his path.