Ninth grade students in Nancy Edelman’s humanities class participated in a student-led Socratic Seminar in response to their reading of the widely-anthologized short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” by Richard Connell. The story, about a big game hunter who becomes the hunted when he washes ashore on an island owned by another hunter whose target is the world’s most dangerous game—humans, provokes many questions about what it really means to be civilized. Students pondered this question and others posed by the story before they begin their next unit studying the rise of ancient civilizations.