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The Lottery: A Dystopian Society

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Have you ever imagined risking your life for your family and friends or can you imagine being afraid to win the lottery? Dystopia is a futuristic imagined universe, where the dictators or government controls people by philosophical and religious ideology or many other ways. There are a lot of movies or books about dystopia, which shows the community as an undesirable and frightening society. How do we know if a society is dystopian? According to Živković, D. Milan in the article “SOCIETY IN THE ENGLISH LITERARY DYSTOPIA” they describe nightmare states where men are conditioned to obedience, freedom is eliminated and individuality crushed. In addition, another clear definition of a dystopian society is its characteristics. Some …show more content…

According to Shirley Jackson in the article, “The Lottery” every year people of the community gather up in city's Square and wait for the lottery. The winner sits in a corner while other people throw rocks at him. This shows a community in which people have lost most of their emotions. They do not care about each other a lot because they are all scared of their own life. They do not like to hit each other with rock, but they are forced to do so. Can you imagine hitting your mom or dad with rocks? In these societies, they need to follow the rules even if they have to hurt their family members. This fear that the characters have is different from being afraid of natural diseases or disasters. This fear is because of the unfair rules that they follow with knowing the fact, that they cannot change it. This fear in characters makes readers believe they live in a dystopian society with no freedom. “It isn't fair, it isn't right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. (Jackson, par.79). This shows the readers that the character is scared and thinks that is not fair. First the fear that this character has and second the fact that everyone follows the rule and do not listen. Mrs. Hutchinson screaming leads us to believe they live in a dystopian …show more content…

LeGuin in the article “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” it seems that the characters accepted a life of guilt-free happiness. In this story, we read that people from Omelas stand and view as the kid gets suffered and they believe that if they let him go Omelas will get destroyed. This shows us both the fear and the numbness of the characters. The characters also give us the clue that they are dystopian prisoners because they act numb and they do not have any emotions for the poor kid. Except they grow to accept the child's fate without feeling sorry for him. They do not feel guilty about making that child miserable. The author also tells us about the society and the wrong believes that the community has informed. It lets us know that the society and people have changed some beliefs. When the child says, “Please let me out. I will be good!”(LeGuin, par.8) it demonstrates the readers that He doesn't even know the reason it is suffering. He thinks that he did something wrong and that is why they suffer him. Readers can also see inside the text that people in this community have no emotion about the child, and even the ones that feel sorry are scared to speak. This fear and numbness of characters let us know that Omelas is a dystopian society. In conclusion, we learned about the dystopian society in three different stories and argued why they are considered dystopian society. We argued that because the characters in “The Hunger Games”,

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The gathering and guarding of the pile of stones suggests that the children were preparing for the lottery’s conclusion, and even anticipate participating in it as if it is a game of dodgeball. The eventual outcome and demise of a community member at the end of the lottery event does not faze the youths demonstrating a numbness towards

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