Satire In D. H. Lawrence's The Lottery

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Similarities
Both stories are satirical. They use the situation to mock society. Paul is an innocent child that is compelled to be the one who earns money for his family by betting on horses. The satire is in the destabilization of family values the mother that does not love her child and the uncle that encourages his nephew to gamble. In the Lottery, the same satire is seen, the townsmen execute Miss Hutchinson because it’s what they always did, their children will kill one of their own every year, and their parents did the same. There is no critical thinking involved it is just the cruel killing of another person to preserve a tradition.

Differences
The nature of the satire is the main difference between the two stories. D.H. Lawrence took a very cynical position on the family unit, while Jackson’s satire is on human nature specifically,

Lawrence explores the potential for a family to self-destruct because of the greed of individual members, Jackson speaks about the backwards thinking of rural life, making the claim that living within a social group is what makes us foolish. However, the common theme in both is the ability for groups to destroy thinking rationally and critically. Also to set the correct priorities for both the townsmen and Paul’s mother. D.H. Lawrence creates a satire on family life in The Rocking Horse by creating a dysfunctional family unit in which the small child, Paul feels responsible for the welfare of his distant and unloving mother. Lawrence alludes to the bizarre nature of the relationship between the children and their mother in the first paragraph “Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.” (Lawrence, 1) So from the start, Lawrence sets up a tension between what society wants to believe and what actually is.