Essay Comparing The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas And The Lottery

The short stories The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson have many similarities in their themes. They both explore isolation and punishment of one person for a group of many. In this paper, I will be analyzing the contrast between the themes of these two stories and how they are similar. They both also look at the theme of societal happiness and how they achieve it. The authors were from a similar time period, but the stories were written in different times of their lives, so there are impacts from the world that are reflected in both stories that will be discussed in this essay. Before we can look into the themes of each of these stories, we need to understand the time period and the authors'

This all just shows how wonderful this utopian society is in their minds. The way they achieve this happiness is through the suffering of a singular child. Once you see this part of the story, the world does not look so great. We get drawn into the beauty of the festival and landscape, and when we see why they can have such happiness, you have to question if it's moral or not. The Lottery has a similar theme, but mainly revolves around traditions and the unwillingness to break them. They justify the killing of one of their neighbors by saying there has “ always been a lottery!”. Old man Warner was the voice of the older generation, saying anyone who does not participate in the ritual is “a pack of fools”. Jackson sheds light on how the older generations are the ones to keep the tradition alive because they have had to live through it multiple times before. Little Davey was handed a stone to kill Tessie Hutcheston and solidify the continuation of the lottery for future generations. Bailey Jackson also wrote this to criticize the followers in the town for not stepping up to stop the violence they are committing against their

The lottery is similar in the way everyone is happy because they get to let out their pent up 5 aggression and anger one day a year, which helps keep the peace. (Bailey) This was their way of making a perfect society, but the other towns around them figured out sooner than them that this was not a perfect society, it was the opposite. The two stories criticize the rituals and traditions these stories show and also the people who blindly follow along with them without questioning them. We can learn a lot from these stories and ask important questions because of them. The ideals presented in front of us give us reasons to think harder about why we do the things we do, and to make us question authority when we are told to do something morally wrong. Work Cited: Bailey, T. (2014). SACRED VIOLENCE IN SHIRLEY JACKSON'S LOTTERY. British and American Studies, 20, 37-42, 2003. Retrieved from https://tccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/sacred-violence -shirley-jacksons-lottery/docview/1614409009/se-2 “Shirley Jackson Biography.” The Biography.com Website, A&E Television Networks, 2