Human Sacrifice In The Hunger Games And The Lottery

In the movie film The Hunger Games, the nation of Panem is a society very dissimilar to our own. This nation once began with 13 districts, until the thirteenth district chose to take action against the oppressors. They were quickly put down, the remaining 12 districts were punished and were forced to fund two participants which were known as tributes , a boy and a girl of young age to the Capitol each year to compete in the Hunger Games which is a brutal fight to the death. The winner of the huger games is then rewarded with a number of rewards, as well as their home district receives an extra amount of food for one year. The government of Panem administrates these annual “games” as a reminder

Another theme that The Lottery and The Hunger Games share is a dystopian society. The Hunger Games takes place in a country called Panem. Panem is split into thirteen sections, the rich Capitol, and twelve districts. The Capitol’s government controls everything and dictates the districts what to do. The government views Panem as a utopian society, but everyone in the districts disagrees. The people living in the districts starve, and fend on their own. The people of the districts are treated unfairly because of that, but also because of “The Hunger Games.” This “game” is when each district sacrifices a male and a

these people with their lives and the lives of their loved ones, the Jews were “persuaded”

They don't seem to understand that this nonsensical sacrafice is nothing more than murder. They further reinforce the point that they are worse than savages when Mrs.Hutchinson is chosen to be sacraficed. Instead of bringing up her issues with the lottery when she first saw it, she waited until her family and more importantly herself was threatened by death. It seems that this is most likely the way it goes every year once someone is chosen to be sacrificed but ofcourse they end up sharing the same fate as everyone

To begin with, both stories are trying to keep the population down. In “The Lottery,” they have a tradition annually, which is the Lottery, and in the lottery, every year someone from the village gets stoned to death by the lottery, or the raffle. In the story, it states, “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers…” This can prove that Tessie Hutchinson was elected to get stoned to death, which displays how every year, someone is killed. In “The Hunger Games,” once yearly, there is a day called Reaping Day, like when someone is selected every year to be killed. In the story

Amy Lowell once said, “A man must be sacrificed now and again to provide for the next generation of men”. Sacrifice, and more specifically, human sacrifice, has arguably been around for 50 000 years, during the time early humans migrated from Africa. Many see human sacrifice as loss of life, but sacrifice is just a means of salvation for the receiver and the receiving. Equally, the idea of “sacrifice” is giving up something valuable for a religion or betterment of the world. The idea of “self-sacrifice” has reoccurring steps that the protagonists go through; loss of self-worth due to displacement, then sacrifice due to heroism, and the consequences of the said sacrifice.

Could you take a hand in killing someone from your community, a neighbor, a friend? What if it was part of a sacred rite? What if it was for some greater good? This is precisely the moral dilemma posed by author Shirley Jackson in her famous short story, “The Lottery.” In the story, a village is required to cull one of its members. In a yearly tradition, everyone gathers to select one person by way of random lottery, and then they stone them to death. As barbaric as the sacrifice is, everyone seems to go through the ritual with an air of resolved finality. “The Lottery” examines the idea of what is required of a person in society, what that society considers to be good, and where the line between the two should be drawn.

The story The Lottery is trying to tell its readers that there are a lot of brutal violent acts that are done to one another and how it's labeled as necessary for tradition or some other radical idea. Shirley Jackson also emphasizes humans aggressive nature. The people in this story had carried out a group murder to one unsuspecting victim in order to have a better harvest. It really gave some insight of some actually practiced traditions that made people reflect off what they have done and decided that if it’s right. This would be a reason why they would bring up the end of an unruly practice.

Imagine this; it is 9am, the sun is out and even though the children are playing , but before the day is done, someone will find themselves the winner of the lottery. However, it is not the lottery that most are familiar with. In 1988 author Judy Oppenheimer conducted an interview with author Shirley Jackson, the author of '' The Lottery'' . In this interview Shirley explained why she wrote the short story in the following excerpt ; " I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives " (Oppenheimer 1988 ). In order to identify the key elements of the

Thematic ideas often are repeated in different pieces of literature. The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and The Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins share similarities in their styles, symbols, and thematic ideas.

Once upon a time there was a little village. In this village three hundred people happily farmed and played and went about their business. The children went to school while the men cut wood or farmed, and the women cooked and cleaned. Every summer in June each of villagers took part in the traditional lottery drawing and one villager was picked for the prize – a stoning. In 1948, Shirley Jackson published this short story known as “The Lottery,” in The New York Times. The story’s plot shocked readers all over America as they learned of the horror happening in such a quaint town. Jackson purposely set this tragic event in this innocent setting to emphasize humanity’s cruelty. Using her appalling short story, The Lottery,

“The Lottery”, in comparison to “The hunger games, are the same in some ways; but in

My two books for this comparison essay are “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. “The Lottery” is about the towns people drawing out slips of paper and seeing who gets the slip of paper with the black pencil dot; whereas The Hunger Games is about Katniss taking her sister's place when she she's called into the Hunger Games and trying to survive in the arena with Peeta in the Hunger Games. This book ends with Katniss and Peeta winning the Hunger Games and the two of them returning to District 12 with mixed feelings for each other, and an unforgettable experience. There are many similarities between these two books.

The Hunger Games promotes the idea of a total government control. The Capitol controls everything that the twelve districts do. The world of Panem is divided into 12 districts where each district has its own role to fulfill from luxury to coal mining. "Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch. This is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy" (Collins 18). This shows that the districts all pay a yearly sacrifice to the Capitol in the form of tributes. Another of showing that the Games is a dystopian society is that any evidence of an act of rebellion will result in the government having to kill anyone who gets in their way. "Look how he take your children and sacrifice them there is nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District 13" (18).

When specific traditions within a civilization are blindly followed, the consequences may be dire and the society as a whole can be negatively impacted. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both highlight the consequences that come along with condoning the traditions that were introduced into a culture. By using arbitrary rules, inequitable odds, and blindly following traditions in these pieces of literary work create an environment for a hostile social ritual and ceremony. The societies displayed in these pieces of literature share a tradition of cruel and murderous behavior which jeopardizes the livelihood of the people who reside in these areas, specifically the youth. Although both of the traditions