Though many societies are different from each other in appearance, they have more aspects in common than some may expect. This is very true in the societies in the movie, The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross, and the short story, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson. The Hunger Games is about the struggle of a young woman who is trying to survive a deadly competition between multiple people drawn and nominated to fight to the death for sport due to a failed revolt against the government. “The Lottery” is a story about how families are picked at random with one member getting stoned to death and how a young woman decides to stand up to her society. Both The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” have many similarities in regards to tradition …show more content…
In “The Lottery,” the town put so much importance on tradition. As the townspeople were getting ready, Mr. Summers said, “Guess we better get started, get this over with…” (Jackson 2). Even though the town is getting ready to do the lottery, the people do not like to do it. This is very odd because if people do not like to do something, people tend to stop doing the activity. The townspeople do the lottery because of tradition. Even though the lottery is hated, the lottery is still done because the townspeople do not know anything else. Both in The Hunger Games and “The Lottery,” there is much importance on tradition. In The Hunger Games, while everyone is gathering for The Reaping, no one seems to want to be there. The faces of those who are participating are nervous, serious, and even a little fearful. Though no one wants to participate in The Reaping, the district members still show up and participate. The Reaping causes unnecessary strain and worry on everyone. The value of tradition is shown by everyone involved. Though everyone hates The Reaping, they still show up and do not even try to change their situation. The tradition is so engraved in everyone that no one tries to change the tradition. Both “The Lottery” and The Hunger Games show the value of tradition; even though most hated the tradition, they do not try to change the
Comparing "The Lottery by Shirley Jackson" and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin
Fahrenheit 451 and the Hunger Games are both intertwined with a futuristic version of human entertainment and a society absent of religion. Both societies are subjected to gruesome and brutal activities as a form of enjoyment. The desire for a thrill and an adrenaline rush dominates the minds of most people. In Fahrenheit 451, it’s very likely that many people succumb to their deaths from accidents but can easily replaced by members of the parlor family who they accept as their own. In the same way, The Hunger Games consists of exactly what the title suggests. They are annual games, which include starving and murder and serve as society’s primary source of entertainment. Most people don’t enjoy watching the games but, the Capitol forces the districts to watch for it believes they are a good source of entertainment. Seeing how the Hunger Games are basically murdering each other until the last child is standing, it relates closely with the kind of entertainment that the society of Fahrenheit 451 provides with the adrenaline and thrill of the same kind. The people in Fahrenheit 451 like their source of entertainment in the way they approach it but the instances of conformity remains the same. This is unlike that of the people of the districts in The Hunger Games. There is indeed a difference between the two societies yet, in the Hunger Games there is less time for many because so many people are working toward survival, while in Fahrenheit 451, entertainment is something that people do daily. The existence of adrenaline entertainment is similar in both societies. Yet they differ in whether or not the people actually like the entertainment.
Typically, when someone thinks of a lottery they think of something positive and exciting but contrary to this idea in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the connotation has an entirely different meaning. As the story begins, readers lean towards the belief that the town in which Jackson depicts is filled with happiness and joy. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 247) We soon realize that this notion is far from the truth. As the townspeople gather in the square for the annual lottery, which sole purpose is to stone someone to death by randomly pulling a paper out of a black box with a black dot on it, it is learned
These stories are alike and different in many ways. In “The Lottery” the men of the families pick a card/piece of paper out of a jar. In “The Hunger games” a certain individual is appointed to choose two names out of a jar. In “The Lottery” they drew papers for a religious purpose. They wanted to get the bad people out of their community. In “The Hunger Games” they did it to prove a point. The president wants to show everyone who is in charge. In “The Lottery” whoever gets chosen automatically gets killed. In “The Hunger Games” if someone gets chosen they get a chance to fight or someone can volunteer in their place. In both stories, the tributes/victim is chosen at random. The community has no idea who will be picked until it happens. In both
Controlling population to “help” their economy. Fights to the death, or an instant death sentence. “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson show the controlling of the population and the death aspect of the controlling. In the movie “The Hunger Games” families line up at the center of the district and one boy and one girl’s name is drawn out of a bowl and they are sent to fight against the other eleven districts to the death. In the story The lottery all of the families line up to have the head of the family draw a piece of paper. If the head of household draws card with a black dot on it the whole family has to come up and draw. The person in the family that gets the black dot gets stones thrown at them till they die. “The Hunger Games” and “The Lottery” are actually very similar. In both the stories they had to drawn to find out who would die or
There are many similarities in, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Both books show many similarities in relation to the themes, characters, and settings. These two authors are a prime example of how two situations in different eras in time can posses many similarities despite their differences.
Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First They Came” have the same themes that can and can’t relate to each other. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small town doing a ritual every year with a death lottery to help grow their crops. “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller is about how the Nazis came for the different people and the narrator didn’t speak out for them and there was nobody left to speak for him. If you don’t speak out for something sometimes bad things don’t change.
In “The Lottery” the author uses descriptive language to describe the box and how it represents tradition. Jackson says, “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.” Even though this tradition is bad and inhumane, the villagers just back away from the box. The difference is in The Hunger Games, the games are described as harsh and just totally not right for any human being in any part of the districts. The author uses symbolism as a way to represent the importance of tradition in this story. Katniss and her friend don’t like it in the districts her friend (Gale) says, “Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it” (Collins
Society is the conflict shown in both “The Lottery”, and The Hunger Games. In “The Lottery” when the town had surrounded tessie and was stoning her to death she was yelling “It isn’t fair, It isn’t right” (Jackson.7). Tessie has been chosen from the lottery to be sacrificed, and the town is following the tradition of stoning her to death. As tessie is being stoned, she is the only one that is denying the tradition. Similarly from Tessie in “The Lottery”, Katniss from The Hunger Games also has the same conflict with her society. When Katniss was in the end of the game and the rule that there could be two winners from the same district was being changed, Katniss used the nightlock berries to get the Game Makers, and President Snow to not change the rules (Ross). In order to keep the games “interesting” for the viewers the Game Makers try to make the two players from District 12, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, fight. Katniss fights against the Game Makers and President Snow. In conclusion both “The Lottery” and The Hunger Games have the same conflicts in
The theme in “The Lottery” is violence and cruelty. Violence and cruelty is a major theme because there is a lot of violence and cruelty in the world. The Lottery has been read as addressing such issues as the public's fascination with salacious and scandalizing journalism, McCarthyism, and the complicity of the general public in the victimization of minority groups, epitomized by the Holocaust of World War II. The Holocaust was very cruel and violent cause other people didn’t like certain people so they just kill them and their children and still now we have violence and cruelty with wars and people that hate each other.
It would be hard to think people being killed and people without morals would be similar, but The Lord of the Flies and "The Lottery" have a lot of differences and that is what makes them interesting. William Golding and Shirley Jackson wrote some similar stories. However, some differences between The Lord of the Flies and The Lottery are the motives for persecuting someone, the setting and the way people are killed.
First, Both stories show that the main characters Peeta, Katniss, Bill, and Tesse follow tradition because no one would dare go against it. In “The Hunger Games” demands are given from the capitol for two tributes to be chosen from a district regardless of their status. “The Hunger Games” began because of civil uprising and to remind citizens to stay in their place. One of the characters Peeta says “I wish that I could show the Capitol they don't own me, that I am more than just a piece in their games”(Collins). He knows that the districts having to suffer because of the lost against the capitol is wrong but he knows that tradition must be followed or else. In the beginning of The Lottery citizens from a small town all gather together in the town square for the lottery. With only three-hundred people in the town the lottery only takes two h...
Both The Giver and “The Lottery” share important messages and themes. The Giver is a suspenseful science fiction novel by Lois Lowry. “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is a realistic fiction short story. Both of these include dysfunctional societies where cruel traditions are followed.. The Giver is about a “Utopia” where the government is in complete control of the people and has an excessive amount of power. “The Lottery” is about a town following extremely outdated traditions that results in the death of someone each year. Both stories share the common theme of, “People follow traditions without realizing the consequences.”
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story about a society in which it is a tradition for the population of a town to gather together in the middle of town for a random drawing with the prize of the individual being stoned. Mrs. Hutchinson was late to the raffle, protesting the whole time how it was unfair, and in the end was the individual that was chosen. This sequence of events and using literary element analysis leads the reader to believe that the so-called “random drawing” is actually controlled to target certain individuals that are threatening their tradition. Therefore, the central idea of “The Lottery” is that if one goes against tradition, society will be violent.
The citizens in “The Lottery” don’t view the lottery as a punishment; instead, the citizens view the lottery as a tradition because the lottery has gone on for so long. In fact, the citizens are so comfortable with the lottery that even children participated in the ritual. The ritual was so common for to the people that a “soft laughter ran through the crowd” shortly before the lottery even began. Because they view the lottery as a tradition, Old Man Warner believed they should continue the lottery because “there's always been a lottery.” Unlike the citizens in “The Lottery,” the people in The Hunger Games interpret the ritual in a negative aspect. These people consider The Hunger Games ritual as a form of “governmental oppression” (Geistfeld). Although the people knew they were being oppressed, they accepted the “power structures that they operate in rather than continually struggle against them” (Geistfeld). Even Katniss describes the atmosphere of the ritual as “an air of grimness” (Collins). Those people with family members drawn consider the ritual to be several “painful weeks” because they will be watching their family member fight for their life. Besides how the people view the ritual, another difference is how many times a person can be entered into the ritual. During “The Lottery,” every family is entered into the lottery a single time. In contrast, people in The Hunger Games can enter the