do you think General Zaroff would have allowed Rainsford to live without being hunted?
This is a purely hypothetical question you could argue either way: Yes: General Zaroff estimed Rainsford even before he met him and probably considered him his equal if not superior. He had read his book on hunting snow leopards, so Rainsford probably had earned a certain notoriety that even General Zaroff couldn’t claim. Hunting was the common passion of both men, and Zaroff enjoyed the feeling of complicity just by being in Rainsford’s company. This would have appealed to his pride by giving him a certain prestige and exclusiveness. He also would have had Rainsford’s moral endorsement about what he was doing. No: General Zaroff was a loner by nature and extremely territorial; he had even bought a whole island just to play “king.” There would have never been any place for someone else in his life he considered on equal terms. He would have been threatened by Rainsford and would have felt the compulsion to kill him just to prove his superiority. Moreover, his “game” had no real rules b
