The article, “Respect” by Sana Farid, argues that respect is being treated with consideration and esteem and to be willing to let people do what they want to do. This article is on a website called Beyond Intractability. This website discusses our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. In this article, Farid discusses the different meanings of respect and what respect is.

Respect means to have a regard for other people's feelings and choices in what they want to do with their life. Farid quotes from a book called The Third Side by William Ury, “‘Human beings have a host of emotional needs- for love and recognition, for belonging and identity, for purpose and meaning to lives. If all these needs had to be subsumed in one word, it might be respect. ’” She is talking about how respect is more than just the way you treat and talk to someone.

In “The Most Dangerous Game,” General Zaroff has respect for Rainsford, giving him a place to stay at and a meal to eat when they first met.

Absence of Respect

Contempt and humiliation are the absence of respect, as are a sense of being unheard or not understood. Farid goes on to talk about how, “The absence of respect or a perceived lack of respect often leads to conflict at an individual, family and societal level.” What she is saying here is a lot of problems start when respect is lost

Similarly, in “The Most Dangerous Game,” General Zaroff has no respect for Rainsford’s request to leave the island, so Zaroff has no respect for Rainsford and his request.

Conclusion/Relation to the novel

Even though General Zaroff shows respect for others early on, he really doesn’t respect them as a person but only respects “the game” of hunting humans. There are many ways to show respect towards people, but once you lose someone’s trust, they won’t respect you as much as they used to. In the world that we live in, it is very hard to respect other people when there are a lot of fake relationships, or to take advantage of someone who is very naive, but if you and someone else have respect for each other, both of you can grow and become better humans.

Connell, Richard. The most dangerous game. Collier’s, 1924. Print.

Farid, Sana. "Respect." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2005 http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/respect. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023