The Rocking-Horse Winner And The Lottery By D. H. Lawrence

Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery,” was written in 1948. It is about a town that gets together to play a game and at the end someone dies. D.H. Lawrence’s story, “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” was written in 1993. Lawrence's story is about a boy who wants to make his mother happy by doing what he can to please her, but she has such a huge obsession with money that the boy can not do anything to make her mother proud. In both “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” by D. H. Lawrence, and “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, the authors use symbolism and themes to convince their audiences. D.H. Lawrence uses many themes in her short story such as an obsession for money, wanting love, gaining luck, and death. The two stories also use symbolism to help the reader better comprehend the theme of the story. Although, the themes of the stories have some differences. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is about love and ”The Lottery” is on the lack of love, though, in comparison, the two stories also focused on greed, cruelty, and wealth.

H. Lawrence, both involve greed. In Shirley Jackson’s short story, every year a lottery is held to randomly select one townsperson to be killed. The people do these incredibly greedy, evil, and cruel things just to keep a tradition. The three primary symbols that Shirley uses in the story are the setting, black box, and the actual characters’ names. The lottery caused the people to be greedy, which made them “take their chance” of winning or losing as well as some saying that “it wasn't fair” that they lost (Jackson 1). The theme of “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is also greed. The mother is unsatisfied inside and looks outside herself for happiness. Because she does not love herself, she is unable to love her family and even appreciate the gifts that she has been