How can I compare the discussion between Whitney and Rainsford to the conversation between Rainsford and Zaroff after dinner?

Unquestionably, there is irony in the responses of Rainsford, both to Whitney and to General Zaroff.  For, unknown to Rainsford, his developing feelings later in the story contradict both of his statements to the Whitney and Zaroff. 

After he himself becomes "an animal at bay," Rainsford understands what he negated in his conversation with Whitney in the exposition of "The Most Dangerous Game."  For, as a hunted "animal at bay" in a tree waiting for the hunter, General Zaroff to discover him, Rainsford comes to know the icy fear of the jaguar, whose feelings he has dismissed earlier in the story.  Then, at the story's end, Rainsford again contradicts a statement of his own made at dinner with Zaroff when he rebuffs the general's remarks about hunting men, declaring that there was no excuse for killing another human being outside of wartime.  Having escaped into the sea, Rainsford appears in Zaroff's bedroom as the general prepares to retire for the night.  They fight a duel with swords and Rainsford, who has decared that hunting another man is reprehensible, slays his foe without remorse:  "He had never slept in a better bed," Rainsford decides.  He has become the hunter of men, a hunter with no sympathy for the hunted.