Story

This story is a perfect example of escape or commercial fiction. The story itself is so far-fetched and the characters are so flat that it is difficult to take the themes very seriously. Take for example the antagonist Zaroff: he lives in a gothic castle on an uninhabited island with nobody but Ivan, who can't talk, for company. He sleeps in the day and hunts people at night for fun! This is the stuff of commercial fiction. It is meant to entertain rather than draw interpretive conclusions.