In fact, at the beginning of the story Rainsford tells Whitney, "The world is made up of two classes -- the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters" (Connell, 1924)
Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race," and Hawthorne certainly seems to suggest that, by not embracing evil, Brown chose to be unhappy (Hawthorne, 1835)
It is important to note that the story almost certainly takes twentieth-century American democracy as its target, because certain textual details have led critics to view "The Lottery" in ways that ultimately cloud the critical, ideological work done by the story, because the lottery admittedly bears some similarities to certain religious practices. For example, Nayef Ali Al-Joulan sees "The Lottery" as reflecting "Jackson's vague, confused, superficial and stereotypical perception of Islam and Islamic rituals due to "the symbolic black-box [seen as a stand-in for the Kaaba in Mecca], stoning, the status of women, the fixed annual date(s) of the lottery, and the act of calling the participants in the lottery five times," whereas Amy Griffin views the story as a reiteration of the archetypal scapegoat seen in the Judeo-Christian heritage (Al-Joulan 29, Griffin 44)
Thus, where "The Lottery" investigates the potential for collective violence as a result of democratic governance, "The Most Dangerous Game" investigates the potential for violence as a result of oligarchic governance. The time and place of "The Most Dangerous Game" is established through the details of Rainsford's disastrous journey to Brazil coupled with Zaroff's mention of "the debacle in Russia" which made it "imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay," meaning the Russian Revolution in 1917 (Connell)
Hutchinson is finally attacked. Her death is not instigated by a single person, because "such action would be deemed 'murder'" (Griffin 45)
] seems to point to New England as the locale of the story" (Yarmove 242). Similarly, the clothing and technology mentioned, such as tractors and blue jeans, seems to suggest that the story takes place near the time of its writing in the middle of the twentieth century (Jackson)
Where "The Lottery" uses ambiguity in order to make its time and place unsettling familiar to the American reader, "The Most Dangerous Game" is explicit in describing its setting as a means of demonstrating its alien nature, thus making Rainsford's transformation all the more shocking. The ideological contrast in "The Most Dangerous Game" is clearly evident, because whereas "Rainsford is an open and gregarious fellow, a friendly American 'democrat with a small d,'" Zaroff is "a displaced member of the old Russian aristocracy who has adamantly refused to accept the changing world around him" (Thompson 87)
Crucially, the story pits an American hunter against a Cossack aristocrat, and while a first impression of these characters might lead one to believe that "the story does not involve much complexity of consciousness" due to the fact that it appears to support a dichotomy of the noble, democratic American vs. deranged, authoritarian foreigner, a close look at the conclusion of the story reveals quite the opposite (Welsh 134)
] most of the names are Anglo-Saxon," and "the land yields an abundance of stones [….] seems to point to New England as the locale of the story" (Yarmove 242)