Compare And Contrast The Lottery And The Rocking Horse Winner

In the both short stories, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe, the authors used different techniques to influence the reader and led to contribute to various themes. Throughout the story of “The Lottery,” the theme is concentrated on religion and tradition. It indicates that tradition in villages has become meaningless over the time. It appears to be eternal; no one knows when it started, and cannot guess when it will end. The lack of history makes the tradition so powerful in the story. Society is reluctant to refuse obsolete traditions, ideas, rules, and practices. In my interpretation, The Lottery would be considered as an example of what can happen when traditions are not addressed properly by new generations.

In both “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the authors take critical aim at two staples of mainstream values, materialism and tradition respectively. Both authors approach these themes through several different literary devices such as personification and symbolism; however, it is the authors' use of characterization that most develop their themes. We'll be taking a look at the parallel passages in the stories that advance their themes particularly when those passages involve both of the authors' subtle character descriptions, and why this method of character development is so powerful in conveying the authors' messages.

THESIS: The themes of Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery” and D.H. Lawrence’s, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” demonstrate a very powerful and sinister aspect of fallen human nature. The characters in both of these stories are driven to what many would describe as insanity in the pursuit of a passion. Ultimately, these pursuits end in unimaginable tragedy and pain.

In Daniel P. Watkins journal entitled “Labor and Religion in D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking- Horse Winner,” ” he references the piece of the story where Paul’s mother has begun to take and utilize the money he has been making. Unbeknownst as to where it actually came from she simply accepts and inquires as to more and more money coming in. It is not utilized to better their situation but to again keep with appearances and advance social standing and status. “There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father’s school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul’s mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and

In “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” by D. H. Lawrence, and “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, the two authors illustrate symbols and themes throughout their stories in which one common idea is present: perhaps winning is not always positive.

The first of the two stories I chose to compare and contrast is titled “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and the second story is titled “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence. I will compare each of their themes, characters, and plot developments in which they are both similar and different. One of the strongest comparison would be that both stories deal with the subject of luck in one sense or another. The Lottery being considered a game of chance in which luck plays an important factor in being the chosen winner but Luck in the Lottery has a different twist of fate because the winner of the Lottery is actually the

D.H. Lawrence is representing that the greed of wanting money leads to insanity and unhappiness. The text states,”So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking horse that gave him his inspiration.” In this text the symbolism is that the rocking horse represents the possession the rocking horse has acquired over Paul. In the text it says “Paul is urging” this non living object. Therefore, this proves that Paul has lost grasp of his insanity and lost his authority of his greed. If money wasn’t Paul’s only goal, then he wouldn’t feel like he needed permission from an inanimate object to stop. His greed for money

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence portray how people can act in atrocious ways when impacted by society. In both of these short stories there is an untimely death of one of the characters. The difference between the deaths is the emotional relation with the characters. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast these two pieces of literature through the similarities and differences in the settings, characters, theme, and plot.

In this semester, we’ve read “The Lottery” and “Harrison Bergeron” from the textbook. They are two short stories; “The Lottery” was written by Shirley Jackson, and “Harrison Bergeron” was written by Kurt Vonnegut. This essay is to compare the similarities and differences between them.

In this essay I will be doing a compare and contrast between the two stories “The Lottery” by Chris Alani and “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Both stories were good, and had a deep meaning behind both stories that leaves the readers wondering why the stories had to end in the way they did. Now I’ll start off by giving a summary of both stories so you can know and understand my point of view better.

The short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Johnson and “Just lather, that’s all” by Hernando Tellez both portray similar situations even though they are two entirely different stories. The two stories both illustrate human feelings and behaviors mostly in reference to fear, violence, unfairness and pride. These two stories, even though they have some things in common, still have some differences and represent some ideas in different fashions. The similarities and differences between these stories have been critically reviewed and will be discussed in the essay.

Nebeker, Helen E. “The Lottery’: Symbolic Touch De Force” Short Story Criticism, edited by Jenny Cromie, vol. 39, Gale Group, 2000, 75 vols, pp. 187-90. Originally published in American Literature, vol. 46, no. 1, March, 1974, pp. 100-07.

“The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence is an unpredictable, fairytale-like short story about a mother of three who constantly worries about her financial problems. She has a son who is fervent about figuring out a solution to her predicament. This story also has an abrupt ending that gives off strong emotion. Another short story, called “The Lottery”, has the same spectacle of ending the story with suspense. Written by Shirley Jackson, this story begins with a sunny day in a village, but miserably ends with the stoning of one of the villagers. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “The Lottery” are two sensational stories that have tragic ironies; however, they differ in tone

black box and the lottery itself. The black box is more symbolic because of its color.Most of the

B. In “The Lottery vs. The Rocking-Horse Winner” we are analyzing the similarities and differences in setting from a fictional viewpoint between these two short stories.