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The Most Dangerous Game
Born in 1893 in New York, Connell grew up in a healthy family atmosphere that undoubtedly inspired his latter career. His father, Richard Connell Sr., was the owner, editor, and reporter of the newspaper Poughkeepsie News-Press before starting his political career in Congress. With this background, he started writing at age 10 and shortly went on to start publishing professionally with the help of his father. He attended Georgetown briefly before returning to work as his father’s secretary until 1912. He then returned to his education at Harvard University and worked jobs at The Crimson Early, the Harvard Lampoon, and The New York American. Feeling the patriotic call of World War I, Connell spontaneously enlisted into the military. While in France, his military adventures introduced him to deep experiences and interactions with the conception and frailty of life. After his short European tour, he returned to America and continued his career as an author.
Following his war experiences, Connell’s writing took a darker tone that challenged man’s understanding of himself. In 1922, he released his first collection of short stories and his notoriety came forth. Two years later, he published his most famous, The Most Dangerous Game, and saw national attention. It is said that this publication most fully reflects his tour in WWI as indicated by the changed nature and style of his writing. Inspired, or perhaps intimidated, by the wartime affairs and experiences, The Most Dangerous Game illustrates man’s savagery from a removed perspective. Often, people do not consider both sides of the destruction they afflict. This story highlights the false conception of superiority that mostly becomes camouflaged and convoluted in modern society. People do not have the proper respect, kinship, or appreciation for their natural environment and only a damning experience faced with a regular exchange of life- war- can expose this. Unconventionally, these inhumane situations can only condition a the modern person to be so enlightened about the present state. Connell had the up close and personal experience with the atrocities of humans that knocked him from his anthropologic high-ground. Rather, he became a writer who expressed these discrepancies and resentments through narrative. Pitting people against each other will have radicalizing affect and Connell saw it as his mission to portray this to the public. A recollection of agonizing experiences may be too polarizing, but fictional stories delivered the same message in a more cushioned manner. Using man’s natural state in a natural environment, opposed to man’s natural state in the most horrendous environment, was a more relatable way for him to push this message. Connell’s ability to portray these anthropocentric and ecological flaws through narrative brought him into the public eye.
Early on, Connell saw tremendous success in his writings. Following the publication of The Most Dangerous Game and the prior A Friend of Napoleon, he won the O’Henry Memorial Prize on two separate occasions. This success invigorated his desire to write short stories and reaffirmed his prosperity in the field. He decided to move to California to more wholly focus on his work over the next 10 years. In these more concentrated years of his work, he published three books and saw continuing success from The Most Dangerous Game. It was ultimately adopted into a movie as it remained increasingly popular since its publication. Connell’s assertiveness and dissent from the contentedness of normal rhetoric progressed with reassurance from his audience during his lifetime.
Media: We Have Had No Rest from the War: One Soldier's Last Battle. Digital image. The Telegraph. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.