Key Relationship In Harrison Bergeron And The Lottery

Question: Analyses how a key relationship helped illustrate one or more themes in the written texts. Since the beginning of the earliest forms of government and traditions, many conventional ceremonies, holidays, or gatherings have been set up for generations to follow. Most people don’t question these traditions, but blindly follow them because they have got used to such living habits for years and years. However, it is evident that blindly following tradition, as well as authority, can prove dangerous, and have negative consequences in some cases. This is exemplified in the short stories “Harrison Bergeron” and “The Lottery”. The above theme is illustrated by a key relationship between a special individual and

People who are “above-average”are physically handicapped by the Handicapper-General men in order to keep the people in this new world are all “equal”. People who are smarter than the “average” person are restrained with mental handicaps, and ballet dancers are forced to put horrible masks on and wear weights on their legs, so that they are no better at dancing than anybody else. In this totalitarian world, any subtle sign of difference is quickly diminished to maintain the so-called “equity” and “order”. Although these above-average people are deprived of their basic rights and their bodies are wrecked for a long time, they are gradually adapted to the situation and have no desire to rebel. For the “average” people, they are satisfied with the status quo and even enjoy the “fairness”. Under such circumstances, nobody has consciously exerted an effort to make different, until Harrison Bergeron, a 14 year-old boy, breaks the silence. As a talented boy, he suffered a lot. But he is not destroyed spiritually but becomes more rebellious and dares to challenge the authority and the convention. As he said “even as I

As the name of the story implies, there is a ceremony called the Lottery. Every year in this village, there must have a person who is unlucky to be chosen as the “winner” and stoned to death by everyone in the village. The belief behind this ceremony is that if this happens every year, there will be a good harvest. The old and worn box for “lucky drawing” shows that this particular ceremony has been going on for many years now. So the faithful villagers are used to the violent murder without any doubts or eagerness to make a change. Tessie Hutchinson is the only villager who protests against the Lottery. When the Hutchinson family draws the marked paper, Tessie exclaims: “It wasn’t fair!”. But her fight is not supported by her family and people around. Her voice is ignored even her husband asks her to be quiet. This refrain continues as she is selected and subsequently stoned to death, but people are always selfish. They look nothing to do with them because they are not the one that will be stone to death. The result of this tradition is that everyone becomes party to murder on annual basis. The lottery is an extreme example of what can happen when traditions are not questioned or addressed critically by new