The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Published 1990 · 8,800 words · about 1 hour at an average pace
How hard is The Most Dangerous Game to read?
The Most Dangerous Game scores 35 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Some nautical and hunting vocabulary; otherwise plain.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Brisk 1920s magazine prose.
- Abstraction: 32 out of 100
- Entirely concrete.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Light; a single chase.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- A straightforward third person tied to Rainsford.
- Symbolic density: 40 out of 100
- The hunt and the jungle carry an obvious thematic weight.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Zaroff's civility against his conduct supplies steady irony.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- The ending is decisive and complete.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- A single linear chase.
How The Most Dangerous Game is regarded
The Most Dangerous Game holds a literary regard score of 66 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.