Essay Of The Lottery And The Most Dangerous Game

The purpose of this paper will be the comparing and contrasting of two short stories previously read and interpreted by the writer. The two stories chosen were “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. These two stories seem to have nothing in common, as they have two separate meanings in two separate eras. However, the moral of each story draws similarity, the author’s paints a picture to keep the audience open minded therefore connecting them in distinct ways.

Dystopian stories works depict a negative view of "the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction”. Often these stories have many themes that can relate to the real world. In the dystopian story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, many themes such as false hopes,hypocrisy, ritual, and mob mentality are expressed throughout the story. In the story everyone in a small village gather in the town square for the lottery, whoever gets chosen gets stoned to death by everyone in the town including friends and loved ones. The use of different themes throughout the story relate to the literary devices and universal storytelling elements setting, verbal irony, symbolism, and social cohesion.

The idea of winning a lottery is associated with luck, happiness and anticipation of good things. In Shirley Jackson's story, " The Lottery", this is not the case. The irony of the story is that the winner of the lottery gets stoned to death by everyone else in the town. The story is very effective because it examines certain aspects of human nature.

In Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," what appears to be an ordinary day in a small town takes an evil turn when a woman is stoned to death after "winning" the town lottery. The lottery in this story reflects an old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order to encourage the growth of crops. But this story is not about the past, for through the actions of the town, Jackson shows us many of the social ills that exist in our own lives.

When a loving, caring, family oriented, women come in conflict with the horrible, despicable, inhumane lottery in a situation in which the town goes together, the results may be a terrible end in a young life. In “The Lottery” written by, Shirley Jackson, the main character Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson’s and the town folk are the main characters of this story. In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses the use of characterization to portray the main ideas of the story. Shirley Jackson also uses the use of plot structure and the point of view in which the story is being told. The Lottery is a way to make a sacrifice for a good harvest in the upcoming season.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.

    "The Lottery," a short story written by Shirley Jackson, is a tale about a disturbing social practice.  The setting takes place in a small village consisting of about three hundred denizens.  On June twenty-seventh of every year, the members of this traditional community hold a village-wide lottery in which everyone is expected to participate.  Throughout the story, the reader gets an odd feeling regarding the residents and their annual practice.  Not until the end does he or she gets to know what the lottery is about.  Thus, from the beginning of the story until almost the end, there is an overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen due to the Jackson's effective

There happen to be different settings in both of the short stories but both of the settings adapt well with their plots. In the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” the setting takes place in the early 1920’s after the First World War on a small tropical island somewhere in the Caribbean, known as Ship-Trap Island by the sailors. Amongst the sailors, they have a mysteriously threatening reputation, which typically scares others. Individuals who pass by the area of Ship-Trap Island sense a subtle, deceptive sense of evil that haunts a number of individuals. The island is covered with a condense jungle that extends all the way down to its insidious, rocky terrain. Whereas, in the short story, “Young Goodman Brown” the story is set in the late seventeenth

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

“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.

As the plot of the stories unfolds, the greater influence of violent tensions become evident. In The Lottery, people follow the tradition despite its cruelty and absurdity. Although the ritual of the lottery is brutal, the dwellers of the village do not seem to see how barbaric it is because “there’s always been a lottery” (Jackson, 1982, p. 118). Nevertheless, the tensions grow when the lottery begin and every citizen is awaiting for its end. The climatic moment of the story grows when the reader discovers that Tess

Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" both attempt to provide their readers with the cruel truth regarding how it is typically human to express interest in cold-blooded acts. These two short stories discuss about people who see nothing wrong with promoting criminal behavior, but who eventually come to acknowledge the horrible position that the victim is in by experiencing it from a first-person perspective. Sanger Rainsford, and, respectively, Tessie Hutchinson are the central characters in these two stories and they are unable to complexly understand the situation that a victim is in until they actually realize that they are the victims.

There are many Americans and people all over the world that live their lives following traditions that are passed down from one generation to another. A tradition can be as simple as cooking a recipe to how you raise your children and holiday traditions. Culture plays a significant role in how people live their day to day lives. In Shirley Jacksons “The Lottery” the people that lived in the town follow a tradition every year. It's easy to understand why Shirley Jackson’s Lottery caused controversy when it was published shortly after World War II in 1948. The Lottery has been dramatized, televised and turned into a ballet. It is taught in high schools and colleges. (Whittier). The Lottery held many questions about traditions that have

In both stories, the innocent characters were fighting death at the hands of someone who found the idea of killing another human being to be a game. In “The Lottery” the game of death consumed an innocent life solely because a few individuals founded a tradition; and in “The Most Dangerous Game” the game of death consumed an innocent life solely because one person thought it was merely entertaining. Both authors portrayed the antagonist as friendly, warm and welcoming. In the Lottery, the antagonists were the families whom participated in the drawing of a name that lead to the stoning of another family member (which may or may not be their own family member). In “The Most Dangerous Game” the antagonist was a well-off general who opened his luxurious home to guests who have gone astray from their original destination. Death is the main theme of both short stories and both authors portrayed this dark and dreary idea as a game the characters are playing.

In the short stories The Most dangerous game and the lottery have many differences and similarities depending how the stories are analyzed and see them in each’s point of views. In The Lottery you would expect for the story to have a good ending based on how the story begins. Demonstrating a beautiful day and scenery, and based on the title itself you would think that there would be some type of gain in the end. And in The Most Dangerous Game the story title tells us that there will be some type of fear and danger involved and the scenery is dark and cold. Both stories depict some type of game, gain, and loss. In The Lottery the entire town meets to draw a lottery, and while it may seem like a normal day to the people I am sure deep down inside they were in fear and felt as if they were in a jungle walking in fear for their lives each time they pulled a ticket out of the box.