Fear makes people do crazy things. In the short story The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell and the movie Quarantine people face adversity that forces them to fight for themselves by all means. The characters in both, the short story and the movie show that facing difficulties makes people stronger as they begin to value their lives. For instance, the main character in the short story- a big-game hunter from New York, falls off a yacht and swims to an isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. The hunt presents him with a lot of unpleasant surprises, but he does anything it takes for him to come out alive. In the movie a group of people encounter a virus they have never been familiar with. As more people are getting sick, they try to find new ways of escaping the building as they cope with the adversity that they have to face. The conflicts show that fear makes people act fast in extreme situations and really do anything it takes to save ones life. In the short story Rainsford has to fight against General Zaroff and his servant Ivan in order to survive. Even though he does not want to fight them, the situation presents him with difficult choices and actions that need to be taken quickly. In the movie people resort to extreme decisions in order to protect themselves, such as killing its own kind who have the rabies virus. Even though they do not wish to end other peoples lives, they have to do so in order to save their own. Overcoming adversity makes people stronger because they learn to fight for their lives. The theme of overcoming adversity is shown through the characters and conflicts in the movie Quarantine and the short story The Most Dangerous Game.
Firstly, the characters in the movie and in the short story show that coping with harsh conditions makes people stronger because they learn to protect themselves and never take their lives for granted. In the short story The Most Dangerous Game, the protagonist Rainsford faces adversity because he ends up trapped on the island when he accidentally wanders into the palatial chateau inhabited by two Cossacks, General Zaroff and his servant Ivan. Rainsford learns that General Zaroff is enthusiastic about hunting humans- he captures shipwrecked sailors and sends them into the jungle supplied with food, a knife, and hunting clothes to be his quarry. After a three-hour head start, he follows them to hunt and kill them. Rainsford wishes to escape this chateau only to find out that he will be the next person to be hunted, Youll find this game worth playing. Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine (Connell 7). General Zaroff isolates Rainsford in his palace and leaves him one on one with his adversity. This is similar to the movie Quarantine where a group of people along with a news crew wander into the small apartment building after a routine 911 call to the Los Angeles Fire Station. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown. After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, the CDC locks them inside the building. Frightened to death they make every attempt to escape this horror, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building. All their attempts are futile because CDC threatens to kill anyone who tries to escape the building. They end up stranded and isolated from the outer world since all of their communications including phones, internet, televisions, and cell phone access are cut-off. They try to find new ways of escaping the building as they cope with the adversity that they have to face.
Just like there are similarities between the short story and the movie, there are differences. When Rainsford finds out that there is no way for him to escape the island, he decides to fight for his life. Rainsford makes every attempt to hide from General Zaroff. He attempts to elude General Zaroff as he builds a "Malay man catcher", which injures General Zaroff in the shoulder, causing him to return home for the night. Nevertheless, he returns in the morning ready to continue the game. Rainsford remains confident in himself and does not lose hope. He then sets a Burmese tiger pit, which kills one of Zaroff's hounds. Finally, he sets up a trap- that was a Ugandan native trick- with his knife that to his great disappointment kills Ivan and not General Zaroff. To escape the General and his approaching hounds, Rainsford dives off a cliff. Zaroff assumes that Rainsford has killed himself and returns home. However, when he turns on the lights in his bedroom, he reveals Rainsford, who had swum around the island and hidden himself by the bed curtains. Zaroff congratulates him on winning the game, but Rainsford decides to get his revenge on him when he says, "I am still a beast at bay" (Connell 10). The General accepts the challenge and says that the winner will sleep in his bed. Rainsford wins a fight because he says, "He had never slept in a better bed" (Connell 10), which implies that he defeated the General. Even though it all ends on a good note for a hero in the short story, the movie does not have a happy ending. All the people in the infected apartment are stranded with no phone and internet access as well as no televisions, which may be their only thread into the real world. Moreover, officials do not relay information to those locked inside. As they diagnose infected people with rabies, the frightened group of yet healthy fellows tries to isolate themselves from the flesh eaters. They are fighting to the last, do not give up and help each other to survive no matter what because they understand that the only way for them to remain in light is to stick together. Unfortunately, as the movie progresses, more and more people are infected with rabies and fewer survive the disease until there is only Angela left, who eventually is also dragged screaming into the darkness.
Secondly, the conflicts in the movie and in the short story show that fear makes people do crazy things, accede difficult decisions, and fight for their lives until their hearts stop beating. In both, the short story and the movie the common conflict is Person vs. Person. In the short story the main character Rainsford- a civilized man who should kill for survival versus the antagonist, General Zaroff- a cold blooded hunter who tends to kill for thrills. When Rainsford finds himself in the company of a crazy hunter, who enjoys hunting humans, and his gigantic deaf-mute servant, he wishes to escape this unfortunate island, I wish to leave this island at once (Connell 7). The General does not let Raisford to leave the island. Instead, he supplies him with provisions and sends him into the jungle to be his quarry. Rainsford is ought to fight against General Zaroff and his servant Ivan in order to survive. In the jungle, where the General sent him he faces adversity and makes difficult decisions. He sets various traps for his pursuers and accidentally kills Ivan. However, Rainsford cannot be blamed for killing him because the game made him do so. He had to follow the rule- hunt or be hunted. To clarify, he did not mean to kill Ivan, but the General left him with no choice. Rainsford had to choose between his own life and the life of a stranger, and he made his decision. Similarly, there is the same type of conflict in the movie. When a group of people trapped in the apartment- where rabies virus develops extremely rapidly- face adversity, they start to act very aggressively and violently. They are trying to help people who are sick until they start to act viciously and try to attack them. Then, they resort to extreme decisions, such as killing them. Even though they do not wish to end their lives, they have to do so in order to save their own. They follow the concept of kill or be killed.
Yet, there are differences. In the movie there is a group of people who act and make choices together, as opposed to the short story where there is only one person that has no one to help him and no shoulder for support. In the movie there are people that stick together as a whole and help each other in extreme situations. To emphasize, there is a veterinarian who despite his lack of knowledge of human anatomy helps the people infected with rabies, though he understands that it is very dangerous for him for the fact that he might get bitten and get rabies as well. Nevertheless, he always stays with them and is doing his best in slowing their death. There is another man who knows the apartment from inside out and has the keys from all the rooms in the apartment. He is making every attempt to help those trapped inside by finding different loopholes through which they can escape this holy place. In addition to that, there is a fire fighter who always encourages others not to give up despite how hopeless the situation. He is the one who constantly saves other peoples lives and keeps them conscious. On the contrary, the main character in the short story is alone and does not have support, I must keep my nerve. I must keep my nerve (Connell 8). He must act by himself and make decisions on his own. His life totally depends upon his own actions and choices. There is nobody who could help him in his situation and any mistake could cost him his life. It is possible that sometimes he makes wrong decisions, but there is nobody he could talk it over with and he has to act quickly, Ill give him a trail to follow (Connell 8).
Overcoming adversity makes people stronger because they learn to fight for their lives. The theme of overcoming adversity is shown through the characters and conflicts in the movie Quarantine and the short story The Most Dangerous Game. In the movie Quarantine and in the short story The Most Dangerous Game people try to overcome adversity that forces them to make difficult decisions in extreme situations. They face a lot of uneasy choices, but do their best in overcoming the obstacles and difficulties that they have to face. For example, the protagonist in the short story Rainsford falls off the yacht and washes ashore on a mysterious island inhabited by two Cossacks, General Zaroff and his servant Ivan. He is later presented with an uneasy choice: be hunted or be tortured, and decides to do everything in his power to remain unscathed. In the movie, a group of people are trapped inside a building quarantined by the CDC after the outbreak of a mysterious virus which turns humans into bloodthirsty killers. They try to escape this horror while overcoming adversity. The conflicts in the movie and in the story show that confronting fear means power over those things people have control over. In both, the movie and the short story people kill one another in order to protect themselves. Even though they do not want to do so, it is inevitable in order to survive. To sum up, in adverse situations people really learn who are there for them. They begin to understand themselves better and find out who they really are. They discover new qualities about themselves that previously were hidden inside them and of which they had never known before. All in all, adversity invariably separates the genuine from the false and sometimes adversity is what people need to face in order to become stronger.
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