Comparing The Lottery And Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

Many societies have projected an image that may not hold true to the reality. Due to the stigma around the common traits of the house Slytherins are often portrayed as inherently evil. The Wizarding World’s misconception about this house has led to a strong bias against those who find their home in the ‘dark’ house. The different societies and their unrealistic visions exist in books, like Harry Potter, movies, and other forms of entertainment. Two books that give examples of this are The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin explore the explicit and implicit viewpoints that people, cultures, or societies will project an image that differs from their realities.

The question explicitly states that a person, culture, or

Louisiana in the 1800s was riddled with slavery, and it was necessary to push an image into popularity in order to hide the immorality of the slave owner’s actions. This is explored in Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin. In her story, she writes about Armand’s emotions toward Désirée, “Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name” (Chopin, 3). As a social elite, the need to hold his status and keep his family in favor of others had Armand ostracizing his love for Désirée. As was expected of the time, plantation owner’s had to broadcast certain opinions about people of color. This derogatory view become a standard for the South and other opinions that differed from this were frowned upon. Kate Chopin, in her story Desiree’s Baby describes a letter about Armand’s race, “’But, above all,’ she wrote, ‘night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery’” (Chopin, 4). Armand was raised white, his father keeping his black mother a secret from the world. We can piece together information to infer that not every person in the South held black people in such a deprecating way. Since slavery holds such questionable morals, it was beneficial to the people’s conscience to view slaves as less than human, causing less remorse for their unjust actions. Southern plantation owners, in order to lessen the cruelty of owning slaves, projected the image of an entire race being worth less, to avoid justifying the morality of