Both men are war veterans and avid hunters, but they have completely different ideas about how the world works. General Zaroff is unable to adapt to the New World and abandon the ideas he grew up with as a noble of the Russian Romanov Empire. However, Sanger Rainsford is able to adapt to the changes that have occurred in the New World. It is for this reason that he is able to outsmart General Zaroff at his own game and kill the Cossack, thus Rainsford was a higher human class than Zaroff, due to the rules of natural selection.