The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson is a fiction short story that
demonstrates a rebellion against the religious ceremony of the lottery. A
village has an annual lottery that is held to help have good corn crop in
June. They believe in something called the “Rain God” and if people don't
participate then they believe that their crops won't grow good compared to if
they did participate in it. Tessie gets stoned by the villagers, because she
won the lottery.
The Hunger Games is similar to The Lottery in the sense of entering
into a ceremony/event. In both stories the town/district would gather
around an area. In “The Hunger Games” the two people are chosen and get
taken to get ready and prepare for the games. In “The Hunger Games”
people are drafted by the districts to fight and the winner would get food
and other simple house things for their district. They would say goodbye to
their loved ones who they may never see again. In “The Lottery” people join
“the lottery” and if you don't participate you won’t have good crops the
following June for corn season. If you won the Lottery then you would get
stoned unlike in the Hunger Games if you win you get rewarded.
So many people participated in the lottery that it took two days to
do. It was a small town of 300 people. A boy Bobby Martin started putting
stones in his pocket to prepare for the stoning of the winner. All of the other
kids started looking for perfect round stones and shoved as much as they
could into their pockets. This shows how brainwashed everyone is in this
religious ritual that leaves one person dead. You could compare this scene
in the story to the hunger games on how brainwashed the capital is to think
that the games are a good thing. The kids and husbands were at the area
first and eventually the wives came and met up with their husbands and
called all of their kids to gather with them.
Mr. Summers ran the “Lottery” as well as all of the other activity that
happened. Everyone in the town feels bad for him because he has no kids
and his wife is a scold. Everyone was ready for day one of “the
Lottery”. While Mr. Summers held the black box, Mr. Martin and his oldest
son Baxter came to help hold the box while Mr. Summers stirred up the
papers inside of it.
If your slip of paper with your name was blank then you were good. If
you had a black circle on it then you were the winner and would get stoned
to death by the people. The winner was found and everyone gathered their
stones and were ready to throw at the winner. The winner was Tessie
Hutchinson.