Theme of "The Most Dangerous Game"

We read the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" in class this week. It's about a hunter who falls off a yacht and reaches an island run by a maniacal hunter who hunts human prey. I teach it from the standpoint of understanding the basic plot structure. There are definitive complications for the rising action and a definite climax. We also start a basic discussion about THEME, one of the hardest literary devices for students to get. It is bascially the central idea of a work of literature. Why was it written? What central idea about humanity is the story trying to get across? In Romeo and Juliet, theme could be expressed as, "Love is more powerful than hatred."

Three of the students, when asked what the theme of the story was, said, "Don't fall off a boat."

Ugh.

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