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Similarities Between The Lottery And Harrison Bergeron

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What do stories like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” have in common? An answer is that they share a theme of man versus society. This theme is what makes these stories what they are. In other words, this theme is the most important element in all these stories. The idea for the first story, “The Lottery” came when Shirley Jackson was pushing a stroller through the small town she lived in. It starts with a typical small town preparing to conduct a lottery. The children are the first to show with the boys gathering stones. The other members of the town show up and Mr. Summers begins the ceremony. The official ceremony had been forgotten, with people debating that there should be a chant, or the officiator has to sing a song. The only …show more content…

“The Lottery” is about a town that kills people off as part of a fertility ritual by a lottery system. The conflict is hard to pinpoint since the main character, Tessie Hutchinson shows up late to the lottery in the middle of the story. Tessie can be seen as a representative of the whole town. Tessie speaks her mind and voices thoughts that others have. For example, when she screams “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” before she is killed (245).Other people have also voiced their opinions about the lottery. For example, Mr. Adams mentioned “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery”(242). By bringing this up, Mr. Adams showed that he believed that maybe giving up the lottery was an idea to think of. Mr. Adams didn’t say directly to abandon the lottery but he brought forth an idea that was in many people's minds. The conflict is found by concluding that the “man” is Tessie who represents some of the individual in the town who don’t approve of the lottery and the society is everybody who blindly follows the tradition of the

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