Certainly, if there is humor in Richard Connell's exciting
and somewhat macabre "The Most Dangerous Game," it is dark. As Rainsford himself tells
the Cossack, General Zaroff, who declares that he hunts quarry with which he can match
wits,
"I can't
believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly
joke."
For, when Rainsford
objects to what Zaroff suggests, saying that he cannot condone cold-blooded murder, the
general laughs, exclaiming incongruously that Rainsford is "droll." After dinner,
Rainsford accompanies the general to the cellar, where his training center lies. At the
window, "grotesque patterns" are made on the courtyard below and Rainsford can barely
make out the vicious dogs. "A rather good lot I think," observes the general with his
morbid humor as he hums from the Folies Bergere [an opera house that had much
entertainment]. Later, however, Rainsford adopts this morbid and macabre sense of humor
as, having defeated his opponent, the general, he observes that "he had never slept in a
better bed."
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