“The Most Dangerous Game” is set in the Caribbean in the early 20th century. The story opens aboard a yacht sailing to the Amazon, where Rainsford and his hunting partner, Whitney, intend to hunt jaguars. One night, Whitney points out a strange island known only as "Ship-Trap Island." After Rainsford falls overboard in the middle of the night and washes up on the island, the remainder of the plot unfolds there. Ship-Trap Island is home to a dense jungle and, most importantly, the massive home of General Zaroff:
Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line; and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building—a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom.
The description of Zaroff's mansion gives the story's setting an ominous and foreboding feel, as the "lofty structure" is described as "plunging upward into the gloom." What's more, the description of the mansion's sheer size hints at Zaroff's unchecked sense of power on Ship-Trap Island.
Although the story's time period is initially unspecified, it eventually becomes clear that it's set in the aftermath of World War I, since both Zaroff and Rainsford allude to their time in the military. Zaroff, who reveals himself to be a member of the Cossack people, also refers to the “debacle in Russia”—meaning the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1923, which led to the dissolution of the monarchy and the collapse of Russian nobility. This historical context would have been on the mind of Richard Connell, who published this story just a year after the conclusion of the revolution.
The onset of the Gild Age in the 1920s brought about exorbitant wealth in the United States and enabled a new culture of big-game hunting, which both Rainsford and Zaroff are well acquainted with in “The Most Dangerous Game." But World War I's destruction and trauma—and the ensuing sociopolitical upheaval in Europe—continued to raise questions about the value of life and humanity, as well as the nature of war as state-sanctioned murder. All of these real-life contexts and issues are interrogated in the story: it examines natural hierarchies, the relationship between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, and the apparent paradox that human beings have the capacity to wage war but might balk at the prospect of hunting a fellow human for sport.
