Compare And Contrast The Lottery And First They Came

Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First They Came” have the same themes that can and can’t relate to each other. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small town doing a ritual every year with a death lottery to help grow their crops. “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller is about how the Nazis came for the different people and the narrator didn’t speak out for them and there was nobody left to speak for him. If you don’t speak out for something sometimes bad things don’t change.

In “The Lottery” the main reason it takes place is because the people believe that killing one person per year will help the crops grow, which is how this theme can’t relate to “First They Came”, by the Nazis killing the people not to help themselves. In “The Lottery” in paragraph 6 it talks about how it’s a ritual and how it’s not about killing people which is why nobody spoke out because it was tradition. In contrast of “First They Came” there was no tradition so they did not have a reason to not speak out.

In “First They Came”, the narrator regretted not speaking out for the people in “The Lottery” there was no sign of regret or sign of the people speaking out for one another.

In other words, the people of “The Lottery” could not speak out but the people of “First They Came” could, they just chose not to speak out for each other. As a matter of fact, the people of “The Lottery” could have spoken up to end the ritual they just didn’t do it because they were too afraid of what the other townsfolk would

think.

In both stories since nobody was brave enough to speak up for each other the onslaught of people kept going. In “First They Came” a mass number of people were killed which can relate to “The Lottery” because in “The Lottery” the town it takes place in probably had a big number of people too before it started. It explains this when they talk about how the old box needed to be replaced, which means the town probably had a lot more people then it does now.

In “The Lottery” and “First They Came” you could learn two different life lessons. In “The Lottery” you learn that blindly following tradition can be bad. In the story “First They Came” you learn that even if people don’t speak out for you, then you should still speak out for them. When you don’t speak up for example if a someone is getting bullied then they won’t stop until somebody speaks up. When you following your tradition and you feel like it’s too cruel you should stop.