Similarities Between The Lottery And The Holocaust

“The morning of June 27th,” is how “The Lottery” starts, but another equally important date is September 1, 1939 (par. 1). This is the day that threw the world into chaos; this is the day when World War 2 starts. Many people relate “The Lottery” to World War 2, specifically the Holocaust, and many symbolic ties to the atrocity. From the opening paragraphs to the final sentence, one can see how Shirley Jackson is “poking fun” of the Nazi party. The story focuses on how one town blindly follows a tradition that makes the whole community turn cruel and savage in a heartbeat. Shirley Jackson is trying to show the reader how barbaric the Holocaust was by writing “The Lottery.” One of the easiest horror to see would be the cruelty of the people in both the Holocaust and “The Lottery.” Everyone knows the sadistic actions the Nazis performed on the Jews. From experimental testing to gassing and burning the Nazi party was brutal. Villagers in “The Lottery” are just as brutal. For example, the villagers have an extreme shift in their mood. As seen in the beginning of the story, the villagers were happy and talkative to one another, but by the

After the reader finds out the Tessie has the black dot the next step is almost immediate. “‘All right, folks,’ Mr. Summers said, ‘let’s finish quickly’” (par. 73). Without question, the villagers pick up the rocks and start hurling them at Tessie. Even her kid, Davy Hutchinson throws rocks at his mother. As seen in the Holocaust, questioning Hitler was useless because if the Nazi’s did they would just get sent to the concentration camps with the Jews. The only evidence one can see of people standing up is the people who helped free the Jews by hiding them, but even then the Nazi party rejected it and would kill the person as soon as they found out. Shirley Jackson again shows the reader how the book is a retelling of a historic event by blindly