Dressed in camouflage, Ken Wempe’s eighth grade English students set off through the woods with trail maps to guide them, hoping that the traps they had lain would slow their pursuers down. But only half were able to escape the evil General Zaroff and his henchman…
This activity was designed to explore a short story that they had read recently in English class – “The Most Dangerous Game,” written by Richard Connell in 1924.
According to Wempe, in the story, the hero Sanger Rainsford is a world-famous big game hunter on his way to the Amazon to hunt jaguars. Rainsford falls off his yacht in the Caribbean Sea and nearly drowns before he swims to a remote isle known as Ship-Trap Island. Here, he is feted and cared for by General Zaroff and his giant deaf-and-dumb henchman, Ivan.
Zaroff, who is also a big game hunter, is a Russian aristocrat who fled with his money during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, bought the Caribbean island, built a gothic-style chateau as his hunting lodge and uses the island for his own personal hunting grounds. Only the highly civilized Zaroff has become bored with the ease of shooting animals and has discovered a new “game” to hunt – man. So he traps sailors on his island, and now Rainsford, to hunt.
“He gives them three hours head start, a hunting knife and food. If Rainsford eludes Zaroff for three days, he wins and is set free. If not, he dies,” Wempe explained.
In the English class’ outdoor activity, Wempe played General Zaroff, Coach Tommy Atha was Ivan and the students were the “game” to be caught.
“We gave the students a 10-minute head start, and then Ivan and I, using starter’s pistols from track and field, hunted them down one by one through the trails and woods of our 500-acre campus,” said Wempe. “Once we caught someone, we would tag them and shoot the pistol which let all know throughout the woods that another student had been caught … The kids had a lot of fun, and Coach Atha and I, who had been running for 90 minutes looking for them, were exhausted.”
Awards were presented at the end of the game: Caroline Baker, Presley Nance and Ty Rhinehart won Best Dressed, and Jett Wayne Puckett, Will Orr, Constanza Ospina and Mary Al-Sayed won Best Chase.
