Compare And Contrast Love And Death

Love and death; one is hated and avoided by everyone because of its painful truth while the other is adored and sought after because of its sugarcoated lie. Neither can be avoided or talked about lightly yet there are so many stories and poems written about both of these polar opposites that it is hard to get a grasp on reality. The short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, and the poem Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall all represent love and death going hand in hand. The Lottery first starts out as a community coming together to follow blindly a tradition that has been around for years. At first the tone seems to be exciting with a sense of calmness and the story doesn’t seem to be anything that

The beginning of the story starts by telling Mrs. Mallard the horrific news that her husband had passed away from a terrible accident at work. At first, the news is not taken lightly and Mrs. Mallard is overcome with emotions. She returns to her room alone requesting that no one followed her. Once in her room, she sits in a chair by the window and takes a look at the ground below her. Sitting there motionless, the story’s mood and tone change from sad to relief as she takes in the spring atmosphere and realizes that at that moment she is “free, free, free!” (307) This is the moment of complete bliss and love. Chopin mentions “And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not.” This shows us that the “love” between Mr. and Mrs. Mallard was not the normal type of love that was represented in most marriages. Mrs. Mallard felt free when her husband was involved in an accident which now she could receive a different type of love, loving herself. The end of this short story read that someone was opening the front door with the latchkey. While everyone stood there waiting to see who it could be, Mrs. Mallards husband, Brently Mallard, walks in. Overwhelmed with emotions once again, Mrs. Mallard then falls to the floor. The doctors came and said she died of heart disease. The last couple words of the story are “of joy that kills.”

With the setting of the poem being in Birmingham, Alabama around the time of the bombing of a church in 1963, readers can tell the tone of the poem is going to be extremely heartbreaking and depressing. The poem first starts out with a child asking her mother to go downtown where a march is taking place instead of going outside to play. The second stanza is the mother of the child telling her no because atmosphere is not good for a little child. The fourth stanza is the mother telling her child she may go to the church instead to “sing in the children’s choir.” (Line 16) As the little girls gets ready to go to the church, “The mother smiled to know her child” showing the love that she had for her little girl. “But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face.” In the seventh stanza is when havoc begins with the sounds of explosions. The mother runs down the streets of Birmingham looking for her lost child. Here we see final stanza radiating with death. The mother of the little child cannot be found therefore; we have to make the conclusion that the child is no longer with the