Compare And Contrast The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

The intent of this paper is to ensure an emphasis of comparison and contrast of two famous, well-known literary fiction stories, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson and “The Destructors,” by Graham Greene. The Lottery is the story about the people of a town following their old and outdated traditions, concepts, principles, customs, and practices. In the fiction story, The Destructors, there is a teenage gang who call themselves The Wormsley Common gang who have embraced the pain, heartache and torture of the past, with its memories and resentments of war and destruction. Even though there are lessons to learn from the past and its traditions, change is refreshing and rejuvenating, because the past once had its time and not all traditions are

worth preserving.
The Lottery takes place on June 27th in a small town of about three hundred people. The day was warm, clear and sunny. The grass was green and the flowers were in full bloom. The towns people gathered in the town square, between the post office and bank. The Destructors is set in a London neighborhood known as the Wormsley Common that had been devastated and left in ruins by the bombing raids of World War II. All that stands now is a parking lot and one old house, over two hundred years old amongst the debris and wreckage.
The characters in “The Lottery” are, Mr.

Summers who is one of the towns leaders and he conducts the lottery. He owns the coal company and prepares the papers to put into the black box for the drawing of the lottery, with Mr. Harry Graves who is the postmaster and he assists Mr. Summers during with the preparation and drawing of the lottery and its traditions. Tessie Hutchinson is the loser of the lottery, she draws the paper with the black mark on it and is stoned to death. Bill Hutchinson is Tessie’s husband who in the first drawing picks the marked paper but, In the second drawing he draws a paper which is blank. Old Man Warner who is the oldest man in the village, and has participated in seventy-seven lotteries. He is upset that other villages have stopped the lottery, because he believes in the ritual of the lottery and thinks the town will regress to living in caves and eating “stewed chickweed and acorns,” if the lottery was to stop. The Destructors characters include, T (Trevor), is the newest member to the gang, who becomes the new leader. He comes from an upper class family and is educated unlike the other members of the gang. Blackie is the former leader of the Wormsley Common gang. Blackie is more concerned about keeping the gang together than who is the leader. Joe a member of the gang and depicted as the fat boy who was the first to support T.’s plot to destruct the house. Mike is the youngest member of the gang. Summer is the only gang member called by his

last name and doesn’t much care for work. Mr. Thomas, who the gang called Old Misery, is a chocolate giving elderly man who owns the old house that has withstood the bombing of World War II. That the Wormsley Common gang will deconstruct.
Jackson’s The Lottery and Greene’s The Destructors, share a common concept, the past. In Jackson’s fiction story, “The Lottery” depicts the need to hold on to traditions no matter what the outcome of it may be, no matter if other villages are changing or not. In the fiction story written by Greene, the characters are holding on to the past with its pain and devastation of the war, that they cannot let go of. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 NIV)
The tone of the story The Lottery changes from, “The morning of June 27th was a clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.” Into “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her (Jackson, 1948). The tone in the story, The Destructors is that of a dark, dismal, and war torn atmosphere of violence and strife.
Both stories have a horrible ending. In The Destructors the end result of holding on to and maintaining the pain and angry of the past brought about the destruction of the home which housed the body of Mr. Thomas. So thus, the consequences in The Lottery were about not letting go of their old tradition that caused the death of Tessie Hutchinson a person which housed the spirit. Therefore, letting go of the past and changing traditions can bring a change of restoration and renewal