Connell’s stories won him much acclaim. He won the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Prize twice for his short stories A Friend of Napoleon and The Most Dangerous Game in 1924, the year of their release. The story features a big-game hunter from New York who falls off a yacht and swims to an isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Cossack aristocrat. The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s. Readers and critics alike have consistently appreciated and enjoyed The Most Dangerous Game, even as many of Connell’s other stories, novels, and collections have fallen out of print. Critics initially praised the story as an excellent action-adventure tale, a tightly told story that moves quickly through a nail-biting plot. 

Therefore, the motivation of this thesis is to make a preliminary analysis of the evil nature the characters in this story have. A general impression with the influence of Christianity’s theory of original sin on the later western people’s minds on human nature will be given so that people could improve their expressions during the cross-cultural communication and then be helpful to understand the theme and thoughts of The Most Dangerous Game. This paper would take some theories and points from those materials, and do some in-depth analysis of the development of the western evil nature theory. Then the author of this paper would like to enumerate the conversation and behaviors of characters in The Most Dangerous Game based on these human nature thoughts to explore the author Richard Connell’s view and inclination. So from this book, a restricted view of the development of western cultures can be gained, which is useful to the convenience of cultural exchanges between east and west.