The compound functions as the novel’s sole setting, creating a closed, claustrophobic environment in which all events unfold. Its physical isolation in the desert mirrors the narrative’s limited perspective: Lily, and by extension the reader, has almost no contact with the outside world, which heightens the intensity of the show’s manufactured stakes. Within the compound, scarcity, competition, and violence are amplified, turning ordinary spaces like bedrooms, the kitchen, the maze, and the shed into arenas of manipulation and cruelty. The setting’s containment reinforces the artificiality of the show, while also symbolizing the psychological confinement of contestants, whose experiences are entirely mediated by the rules, tasks, and surveillance imposed by the production crew.