Similarities Between The Giver And The Lottery

Kanya Patel
Mrs. Wald
Language Arts
2/24/23

Imagine a world with unjust laws and nobody changes, or protests about it just because of the reason it's been around for ages so it must be right. In the dystopian novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry; and the horror novel "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, both texts show a theme of people being reluctant to change even when a tradition is unjust.
In The Giver, by Louis Lowery, society is very corrupted. People cannot act indifferently or else they will be ‘released’, which is the sage's terms for death. This quote is also an example of sameness, “Two children--one male, one female--to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules.” (Lowry 7). The rule makes it so each family has a wife, husband and children, no inbetween. Which is a very serious topic and needs to be changed, but people think that this is the way that it should be, and if it were any other way, their society wouldn’t be so great and perfect anymore.

This tradition was encouraged by a man named Old Man Warner, who convinced everyone that the lottery must never be changed, as he said, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery” (Jackson 30). This shows how much Old Man Warner opposes the idea of the lottery, which causes the other civilians to believe that it is a much needed thing too. In addition to that, it also shows what a huge role Old Man Warner plays in this