Ivan Character Analysis

Ivan is General Zaroff’s servant, a fellow Cossack, and lives with him on the island. He is the first person Rainsford meets when he knocks on Zaroff’s front door. Ivan is an extremely large, powerful looking man, and he is deaf and mute. Zaroff employs him to assist in the manhunts and to intimidate those who resist being hunted with threats of torture, as Ivan was previously a professional torturer for the Russian Czar. Near the end of the story, the reader can assume that Rainsford kills Ivan with a knife booby-trap. Both the narrator and Zaroff’s treatment of Ivan throughout the story indicate that neither viewed Ivan, a disabled man, as fully human but instead more akin to a large guard dog. He is often described in a way that lumps him in with the hunting dogs, and he dies while leading their leashes. After he dies, Zaroff is irritated at the inconvenience of being without a bodyguard rather than grieved for the human loss.