Sanger Rainsford's Ethical Dilemma

Everyone must make a choice at some point in their lives. Whether it’s choosing what to have for dinner or something bigger and more significant, they all make a difference. In the case of Sanger Rainsford, the latter option is the case. He is faced with an enormous moral decision given to him by an aristocratic Cassock on an island. Rainsford’s need to make a choice reflects the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken and his decision takes him on a mental and physical journey, paralleling when two roads diverged in a wood.
Sanger Rainsford, a big game hunter, spent his time travelling the world and hunting large and exotic animals. He was on his way to Brazil to hunt jaguars, and thought that it was absurd of his friend Whitney to consider the jaguar’s feelings. Welcoming to a good challenge, he calmly accepted his fate of being shipwrecked and …show more content…
So many people had already lost their lives to the hobby of this psychotic man, General Zaroff. Therefore Rainsford had a lot to consider when he, like all those before him, was given a choice. Rainsford received three options, and having Zaroff’s large assistant ‘dispose’ of him didn’t seem favorable. With it down to two choices, Rainsford could easily join in Zaroff’s game and experience ‘the hunt of a lifetime’. After all, he had described hunting as “The best sport in the world!” (Connell). But he ultimately decided that it wasn’t right; it wasn’t a moral choice. So once again like all those who came before him, Rainsford became the hunted. At the time it wasn’t the proverbial road less taken since it had been travelled many times before. But the protagonist saved the day by outsmarting Zaroff and beating him at his own game. This ending of the story really relates to the poem because Rainsford’s choice made all the difference, by unknowingly taking the road less traveled and winning the