Suspense In The Most Dangerous Game By Richard Connell

Suspense is created throughout the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, to keep the reader hooked to the plot. Without suspense, the book would be boring and uninteresting to read. Connell uses feelings like fear and anger to create a thrilling feeling towards the reader. In this particular story, Connell uses cases of foreshadowing, point of view, and cliffhangers to create suspense. First off, Connell uses foreshadowing to create suspense by using appalling words to map out the near future, and by using dialogue. When Whitney brings up the topic about Ship-Trap island and how “[s]ailors have a curious dread of the place” (Connell 1), the reader suddenly feels a sinking feeling set in as they can already assume that the main plot of the story is going to take place on that island. Connell knows that making the setting seem enigmatic and dreadful will make the story much more interesting rather than a plain setting without anything special. In addition, the way general Zaroff talks to Rainsford may seem a bit unsettling, by the fact that his actions were a little bit off. Suspense starts to build …show more content…
For instance, when Rainsford “leaped far out into the sea” (Connell 14) to dodge Zaroff’s dog’s attacks, the reader is shocked because they know that chances of survival of jumping off a cliff is scarce. This creates suspense as the reader thinks Zaroff had officially won the hunt, but they also wonder what had happened to Rainsford. Moreover, as Rainsford decided that “[Zaroff] had never slept in a better bed” (Connell 15) implies that he had committed murder, making him rather a hypocrite. This creates feelings of mystery, because after Rainsford had killed Zaroff, the reader was not given information on how Rainsford had actually gotten off the island. More questions are raised on to what he does