Introduction:
The books that will be compared in this comparison essay are ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins and ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson. While ‘The Lottery’ focuses on the town’s people having to draw out various slips of paper to see who gets a slip of each with a black dot of pencil, ‘The Hunger Games’ tells of Katniss taking the role of her sister as she is called to participate in the Hunger Games and tries to survive in the environment with Peeta. In the ends, this book maintains that Katniss and Peeta won the Hunger Games as both of them return to District 12 having mixed feelings to each other as well as an unforgettable experience. This essay will focus on comparing themes of sacrifices as used by the respective authors in the two books. Both stories develop experiences that are mind carrying.
The major theme that is similar in both stories is that of sacrificial rituals. Each of the stories has rituals which are completed for annually. In ‘The Hunger Games’ two people from every district (1-13) are sacrificed for the remembrance of the towns’ people on the issues of rebellion and the ways in which they sacrificed two people from the districts. Later, they go to capitol to train for around 2 weeks and then go venture in the arena with the aim of being the last one left. It was not until they had to rule two individuals from the same district could live. However, if they were from separate districts, one of them had to be killed. In ‘The Lottery’ they had annual sacrifices for good harvests. They used to put slips of paper in one box for each member in the town. One of the slips had a black dot making it that whoever draws it embraced several changes together with their families therein.
It is particularly interesting to learn how various people do pathetic actions like in ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Lottery’ for the purposes of entertaining their selves as well as keeping people in control. They cause harm to beings with feelings which is socially unacceptable as no one has the right to cause murder unless there are profound reasons or things that necessitate them to. Furthermore, one of the impressions of ‘The lottery’ is that a person wins and immediately becomes one of the richest. It is even more shocking to realize that everyone is essentially afraid of winning. However, as the story progresses many things change the mindsets of the audience such as each of them could develop different meanings between each other. Moreover, there are several aspects under the theme of suffering that compare and contrast in the analysis of ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Lottery’. For instance, both of them bear a curtain time and place in which they settle on either the winner in ‘The Lottery’ or the players in ‘The Hunger Games’. On the other hand, the difference is fundamentally due to the fact that in ‘The Lottery’ there is one individual who ends up being killed. Even as ‘The Hunger Games’ chose twenty-four participants and only one stays alive means that twenty-three of them are killed each year. In my view, this is an explanation of outright humiliation.
With respect to Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’ there were plenty of solutions that take kids from various districts and forces them into killing each other while the society watches. The children are forced to kill each other and are denied the right of rejecting the game or stopping the lottery. Additionally, they develop a similarity in the ways they choose players or persons for that matter. This is done through putting a listing of names in a box and randomly choosing them through picking papers out of. They have a common element in which there is only one individual who calls out the names. This is a proof that only one person who pronounced the names of the participants, similar to ‘The Lottery’. However, in ‘The Hunger Games’ a boy and a girl are chosen from every district and are put in an arena to fight and kill one another as a way of surviving even though in ‘The Lottery’ they chose through putting a black dot on a white wile paper. Whoever gets the black circle is thrown rocks at until he or she dies.
In both social settings, they extensively share a culture of a behavior that is cruel and murderous. This generally leads into the jeopardy of young lives in the name of saving their tradition. In “The Lottery” the tradition is stoning persons randomly chosen in a lottery. This later leads to the choosing of a young girl who is stoned without a second thought which was not fair at all. Stones hit her from all sides subjecting her to a lot of pain and suffering. On the other hand, in ‘The Hunger Games’ children were picked from a lottery in each district for the purposes of fighting to the death. The story explains the games’ tradition as well as how it was followed irrespective of whatever. In either of these cases, it is clear that keeping traditions blinding them to extents that even the sacrifice of young lives was not an issue of much concern. Both stories use cruel traditions in keeping people in particular control as well as preventing change. In ‘The Lottery’, Old man Warner observes that it is no longer as it used to be and people are not like they used to be.
This simply implied that maintaining the things in the way they previously were in the town as well as keeping up with the tradition was all they wanted even though they had fear of chaos if the tradition lacked. In ‘The Hunger Games’ they continued using their traditions in keeping people in control and fear through taking kids from various districts and forcing them to ultimately kill each other as people watch. This is their way of reminding people how they are totally at their mercies. Both stories illustrate that such traditions give fear in keep people in ultimate control and preventing change. Having a stand about her husband’s drawing on the slip, Tessie gets the concept as they are drawn from either of them and Katniss keeps fighting to survive in the arena. Both of them also have familiar plots as they both fight and search for the purpose of life. The two books are relatively similar due to the fact that the main characters have much care for their family and friends and do not want them to undergo suffering. Katniss did not want Prim to engage in suffering in the Hunger Games while Tessie did not want her family to as well.
‘The Hunger Games’ present tributes’ suffering in the form of mass entertainment, and the more the tributes face extensive suffering. Ideally, in battling with each other, the entertaining element of the Games becomes more evident. The ultimate draw of these Games for the viewers is the aspect of voyeurism which in this case watches the tributes in which children fight and die. At various points, Katniss talks much about past Games as well as what makes them successful and unsuccessful. The story also points out the recurring motifs that the viewers seek to see as the tributes battle one another and stay up long before dying (simply because the entertainment will have ended).
The principles in this case are best exemplified in the death of Cato at the novel’s end. Once Cato is defeated by the mutations, they do not kill him at the same time, and Katniss is able to realize that the makers of the Game want Cato alive as it creates exceedingly gruesome characteristics. It is the Games’ finale they deliver prolonged suffering to the audience at home which will be essentially hard to turn away from. However, the suffering in this case does not have to be extremely physical as it could be psychological also. The romance by Katniss and Peeta, for example, is a subject of much fascination as it is presumably doomed. They are crowned as the ‘star-crossed lovers’ which means they are ill-fated and that their promises of suffering add intriguing drama and at the same time, makes them even more fun to watch.
The lottery is a representation of any idea, behavior, or action which is passed down from a generation to the other that is unquestioningly accepted and followed irrespective of how cruel, bizarre, or illogical. The lottery continues to take place in the village for a long which any of them remembers. It is both a tradition and an annual ritual which none of them thinks of questioning. It is an integral part of the culture of the town which in fact it is accompanied by old adages. The villagers have gradually become fully loyal to it or tell that they are irrespective of the fact that most parts of the lottery continue changing or fading away as time progresses. The lottery continues nevertheless, simply due to the fact there it has always been a social ritual. The outcome of the tradition is that each individual becomes subjected to murder annually. In this case, the lottery serves as an extreme instance of what happens as traditions are not critically addressed or questioned by new generations.
Both Texts portray that following tradition blindly could translate into fear in the society as people become scared for purposes of challenging their status quo. In ‘The Hunger games’ the status quo becomes easy to follow as the commands stream from the capitol. The games started due to a civil uprising aimed at reminding citizens of their respective places. People become fearful in challenging this due to the fact that they do not want a situation that escalates to the worst case scenario. This is also proven in ‘The Lottery’ as the atmosphere is rather tense when people gather for the lottery. Most of them are particularly afraid of standing up for their beliefs as they inhibit the society from changing.
