Richard Connell’s short story contains many forms of symbolism, and foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a literary device an author uses to create suspense and to help the reader with context clues, as well as to predict a future, ominous occurrence. In the story, the word darkness no longer only means a partial or total absence of light. Darkness symbolizes the insanity in General Zaroff’s mind. The short story starts with a yacht on the dark mysterious ocean passing a mysterious island. One of the characters, Whitney, told Rainsford, “ ‘The old charts call that ‘Ship-Trap Island’ ”(Connell 1). Rainsford and Whitney were on their way to hunt jaguar. The night was falling upon them, so Whitney went to sleep; Rainsford took a couple more puffs