Compare And Contrast The Giver And The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Jinwoo Park
Ms.Wald/Mrs.Ruggiero
Language Arts-Period 7
1 March 2023

Should you follow what other people are doing or did? In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, there are people in a community who live with no emotions, color, or pain before a boy named Jonas changes everything. In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there is an event that takes place in a small town every year where people kill the person who wins the lottery and they don’t feel sympathy for the person’s death. Therefore, the theme in both stories is that people are blinded by other people and by mob mentality.

The people in the novel The Giver are living the same life every single day and they are living life like robots since they have no emotions and they are limited to things. In the text, Jonas said, “The rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE” (Lowry 4). This shows that people in the community are following orders like robots do from their creators. In another text it says, “Isn't fair that nothing has color!''

When that person won the lottery. The text of “The Lottery” says, “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (Jackson 7). This shows that even little children don’t know what they are doing and that stoning people to death is wrong. In the text it says, “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it” (Jackson 7). The evidence shows that Tessie Hutchinsens Husband does not care for her either and he just forced the paper out of her hand aggressively like he wants to see her die. The evidence supports my claim because the text shows that Tessie is getting stoned to death by her children and her husband and they don’t feel sympathy since they are following the crowd and because of Mob