Horace ends up being moved out of his job because of this inability to communicate with the antagonist: Mr. Cowan. In the end, Horace is moved to a different job, but learns to change in order to get his old job back. It works a little too well, and he ends up being promoted, along with the termination of Mr. Cowan's position in the company. Thus, the cage in the story represents him, in that in order to have relationships from people, he must break free from the bars imprisoning his former self. But until the very end of the story, Horace was still trapped, alone in the cage he'd been sitting in for twenty one years. Isolation also occurs in "The Most Dangerous Game", also by Richard Connell. Sanger Rainsford, a world renown hunter and the protagonist of this story, falls of his boat headed towards Rio, and swims to the nearby island. Despite, being feared by all sailors, and being named "Ship-trap Island" (Connell 1), it is isolated from everyone except for those who dwell there. Not only is it remote, nobody would dare to go near it because of the mystery and superstition surrounding it. Even their fearless captain was afraid. …show more content…
In, "The Cage Man", Horace Nimms, "...had not been sitting on his high stool long when he became aware that a man, a stranger, was regarding him fixedly through the steel screen." (Connell 3) Horace is unable to escape the gaze of this stranger who peers through the screen of his cage. This is an unsettling sight for anyone, but Horace, "...was a but disconcerted." (Connell 3). Disconcerted means unsettled or disturbed. Horace knew all his accounts were in order, but he still felt shaken by a stranger watching him. This builds suspense and conflict as the reader develops many questions: Who is the stranger? Why is he watching Horace? What does he hope to accomplish? And so on. This significant development in conflict makes the reader more involved in the story, and creates a better plot as a whole. This stranger actually forces Horace out of the cage, and thus forces Horace out of his old mentality and into his new evolved self. If Connell did not present the fact that, despite not having done anything wrong, Horace was unsettled by the stranger, there would have been no conflict at all. If Horace was comfortable and normal around Cowan, there'd be no conflict, no growth, and no progression in Horace's life. Similarly, Rainsford undergoes a similar process in, "The Most Dangerous