Compare And Contrast The Storm And The Lottery By Kate Chopson

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Kate Chopin the author of "The Storm" and Shirley Jackson, the author of "The Lottery", both hit on key points of human nature. In "The Storm" Chopin writes about a storm that tears apart a family. The family starts to compromise some of their rules. Some of these compromises are more severe than others. "The Lottery" is all about a modern day sacrifice for crops. A town comes together just to kill one of their own, but in this story people begin to question their sacred tradition that has been going for ages. Even though these two stories are so different the two authors do a great job in point out the weaknesses of the human nature. These authors challenge the man versus himself mindset and also man versus society, in multiple ways. Kate …show more content…

The two stories "The Storm" and "The Lottery" both do a great job on pointing out the human nature of desperation. Though they show different forms of desperation, it is a clear theme for both. In "The Storm" Kate Chopin writes about the human need for comfort. While the storm is raging on the outside, the housewife, Calixta is worrying so much for her husband and her son. Calixta worries so much that she needs comfort, she gains comfort from the closest person willing to comfort her. That just so happens to be the guy she has had past affairs with. Calixta is so desperate for comfort that she rushes to Alcee and momentarily her feelings for him return. If the story ended right there then it would not quite show the full extent of the desperation. When the storm passes and the family is back together Chopin writes "So the storm passes and everyone was happy" (Para 40) Shirley Jackson writes of the same theme just in a different sense. "The Lottery" has two kinds of desperation, one is how desperate the town people are for their crops. the town people were questioning the tradition, probably since the beginning of the Lottery. The town 's people knew that it somehow worked so they kept with it. The town 's people knew they needed the crops to live and continue to thrive, but at the same time they were always taught that the Lottery was how things were done. The second sense of desperation comes from the fact that people knew the lottery was wrong. The ones that understood this were too desperate to fit in. They realized that going against the tradition would cause

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