Skip to main content

Why does Rainsford choose to confront Zaroff in the end rather than simply ambush him? What does this reveal about his personality?

That's a good question.  There isn't any textual evidence that directly tells readers why Rainsford doesn't simply shoot Zaroff in the back from a concealed location.  I think one possible reason is pride.  Rainsford wants Zaroff to know that he has been beaten.  Rainsford also wants Zaroff to know that Rainsford beat him.  If Rainsford took a sneaky shot at Zaroff, Zaroff wouldn't know that he had been beaten by Rainsford.  Zaroff would just be dead.  Rainsford is a popular hunter.  His skills have made him famous, and he still finds hunting normal animals thrilling. On the other hand, Zaroff pompously claims that he has grown bored with hunting the most dangerous animals in the world.  In a way, Zaroff seems to be claiming that he is a far better hunter than Rainsford because animals are not a challenge anymore.  By showing himself, Rainsford essentially says, "See, I knew you weren't better than me."  


Perhaps another reason has nothing to do with pride.  Perhaps Rainsford simply wants Zaroff to know what it feels like to be the prey.  Rainsford has been hunted to within an inch of his life, and nothing was fun about it.  Zaroff thinks it is great fun because he is not the one being hunted.  Rainsford's motivation might be just wanting Zaroff to feel what it's like to have the tables turned.  


A third possible reason deals with Rainsford's general character.  Rainsford is a reasonably moral man.  Zaroff presents a fairly logical explanation as to why hunting humans is acceptable.  Rainsford isn't even intrigued in the slightest.  He's appalled from the very beginning, and he calls Zaroff a murderer.  



"Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder."



I think Rainsford's morality just won't let him shoot a man in the back.  That's why he confronts Zaroff instead of ambushing him.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more