A Comparison Of Fear In The Lottery And Day Of The Last Rock Fight

Fear is an emotion that is powerful enough to affect people’s lives and their decisions. In the short stories The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and Day of the Last Rock Fight by Joseph Witchill, fear plays a big role on both the protagonist’s lives. Both authors used fear as a determining factor for people’s loyalty, however, Jackson and Witchill have shown completely different sides of the effect that fear has on people. The authors have also depicted different persons that the characters are fearful for, whether it be their own person or someone they care about. Therefore, both the stories show that fear is a deciding factor in a person’s loyalty towards others. In both stories, fear has an effect on the protagonist’s decision about loyalty

In The Lottery, Tessie has fear for her life and that causes her to betray her culture by being against her tradition. In the start, Tessie supports the tradition of the Lottery but as soon as she realizes that she was the one who got the paper with the black spot, she starts saying “I think we ought to start over, I tell you it wasn’t fair” (Jackson). This act shows that when Tessie finds out that she was going to be stoned, she says that the tradition is not right. The fear of being stoned affects Tessie’s opinion about the tradition and causes her to betray her culture. If someone else had gotten the paper with the black spot, Tessie would have still supported the tradition but the dread of losing her own life changed her mind. Like Tessie, Ronnie’s decision is affected by fear however Ronnie does not fear for his own life but for Peter’s life. Ronnie stays loyal to Peter because he fears that telling the police would get Peter in trouble. When Ronnie has a nightmare about betraying Peter, he is almost about to tell his father that Peter was the murderer, but then he remembers all the things Peter did for him and thinks “I could never tell you [Ronnie’s father] about it until my telling could no longer get Peter Irish into trouble”. This thinking shows that Ronnie did not care about his own life but was trying to protect his friend. Ronnie was afraid of getting Peter into trouble and that fear caused Ronnie to stay loyal to Peter. In both the stories, the protagonist has to make a decision about loyalty and that decision is affected by fear, but the thing they have fear for is different. In The Lottery, Tessie has fear for her own life but in Days of the Last Rock Fight Ronnie has fear for Peter’s life and not for his own