The Pedestrian, By Ray Bradbury And The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Postmodernism is the idea that everything has already been done, every story has been told, and it's impossible to be 100% original anymore. Authors take this lack of originality from other texts and experiment to create a story of their own. Within postmodernism, there are eight possible characteristics that are present in the texts. The post modernist theme of paranoia is demonstrated in both “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. In The Pedestrian, Bradbury is exaggerating how technology is going into overdrive which leads to everybody being unsocial. Jackson uses a different kind of paranoia, she emphasizes tradition and hypocrisy in her short story. The main character in The Pedestrian, Mr. Mead, is different from his peers. His mind is not all caught up in technology like the others. He

In this short story, the villagers gather in the square for the town lottery on June 27. Mr. Summers runs The Lottery. He enjoys using his free time to help out the village. The black box with the slips of paper inside used for The Lottery is beginning to look shabby and “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” (pg.2). This reveals how threatened the villagers felt to the idea of change. Although the townspeople are against the idea of change, they allow Mr. Summers to use slips of paper instead of wooden chips. The author states in the text, chips of wood “had been used for generations.” (pg.2). However, the towns population grew increasingly so they replaced the chips of wood with slips of paper in order to fit every name in the black box. There changes that have been made to The Lottery have been very minimal. The villagers are paranoid the idea of change to The Lottery’s