1 Introduction 1

2 A Brief Introduction to the Western Evil Human Nature Theory 3

2.1 The Origin and Development of Evil Human Nature Values 3

2.2 The Significance of Evil Nature in Modern Age 5

3 Evil Images in The Most Dangerous Game 6

3.1 The Consistent Hunter–Sanger Rainsford 6

3.2 The First Hunter, The Final Huntee–General Zaroff 7

3.3 The Confliction Between Two Men 8

4 Enlightenment of Evil Nature Theory for Modern Society 10

4.1 A Unit’s Evil Helps to Know the Essence of Humanity 10

4.2 A Society’s Foundation Is Built on the Correct Understanding of Humanity 11

5 Conclusion 12

Bibliography 13 

1 Introduction

With the process of economic globalization and integration, it’s a general trend to strengthen exchanges between China and other countries. Regardless of the trade contacts and economic cooperation or culture transportation in the world, it is all necessary to understand different cultures ultimately. The formation of western culture and eastern culture has their own distinct historical trajectory. So to avoid unnecessary culture shocks, we convey our national culture to the outside world, meanwhile, we also need to have a detailed understanding of other culture. 

Therefore, America, as the main of China’s communicatees, has attached most importance to the need. As an immigrant country, American history is not so long, while this country has undoubtedly the multinational culture. But its development cornerstone is, to a great extent, the same as most European countries’, for they all are deeply influenced by the western religions and develop their unique culture in this country on this basis. 

The development of evil nature theory is also unusually active with the constant changing of religions among the European countries and even in the United States. Because of faith, evil human nature thought in the West has more humanistic religious color. The concept of evil human nature is one thought widely accepted by the western countries for their religious culture. The theory of original sin of human nature in Christianity is the cultural foundation of western constitutional government, as Wang Jinyuan (1958) has written in his essay The Cultural Roots of Western Constitutionalism. And Richard Connell, the author of The Most Dangerous Game, to some extent, also offered readers wide considerations for this thought. For hundreds of years, based on this theory, there are endless sociologists, psychologists, writers and artists who have done a lot of systematic researches and created plenty of works. 

The view of human nature is quite important and different in China and Western countries, though we had Hsun Tzu, one of Confucian scholars, who puts forward evil human nature which is totally different from good human nature in Confucianism. By the intercomparison of western and eastern evil human nature theory, people can learn more about the differences between nations, histories, and cultures.

Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game analyze the “evil nature” in literary works, and hope it’s helpful for more people to understand this book and the “evil nature” with the aid of data collections, materials, reference books and journals collected from the library and the Internet. The Most Dangerous Game manages to expose weighty issues of war, ecology, and especially human nature that remain relevant today.