Comparing Fahrenheit 451 And The Lottery

1. War as seen through the eyes of Ambrose Bierce in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge depicts it as truly gritty. The author successfully sends a message of how death is a part of war, and it is not as noble or glorious as one would think it is. Due to popular media, we have this attitude that the protagonist is going to go down in a blaze of glory, and while it may be true for some, it is not like that for everyone. War is rough, dark, and gritty but no one ever wants to talk about those parts of war because it would ruin the fantasy of it.

2. We see a very disturbing ending in the Shirley Jackson’s, The Lottery where the reader believes that the lottery in mention is solely a monetary game of chance, like in our lives presently. However,

this is completely wrong as it is a lottery in which the prize is being selected as a sacrifice for the village to have blessed crops in the fall. It is very surprising, and sends the reader a message of how we in society conform to traditions to easily and sometimes without thinking.

3.

I believe Mrs. Hutchinson in The Lottery is meant to represent the idea of a stereotypical woman conforming in old society. She is only interested in taking care of her family, cooking, and cleaning. Now this is ironic because as the story goes on, she becomes less of a family woman, by trying to offer up her other family members with the goal of trying not to die. So I believe she represents the two side of conformity: conforming and not conforming to an extreme extent.

5. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 leads from an average beginning by introducing a new world for readers to become enveloped in, followed by the protagonist’s descent into not conforming to society’s rules, then the story spirals out of control and leaves readers speechless by the actions taken by the main character and the government of this society. This structure reinforces the author’s main point of how knowledge is a powerful entity that would force anyone to break censorship on a society.

6. I believe that the characters Beatty and Mildred were catalysts for Montag’s awakening in Fahrenheit 451. Beatty was responsible for tempting Montag with the idea of reading books, and so he is the main reason that Montag grows a hunger of knowledge for themes and ideas of literature. Mildred is also a reason for the awakening of Montag, because she was his wife but had no emotional ties for him, so instead of having love from his wife he decided to search for love in other places resulting in a love of

literature.

7. Ray Bradbury’s main point of concern is that new technology is making society more moronic as a whole. We see this through a character such as Mildred, the protagonist’s wife who is a slave to her television. She doesn’t really care about anything except choking down her pills and watching soap operas/ television programs. So in a way she is becoming, moronic as she has no interest in anything else, except her piece of technology.

9. Emphasis of an individual, Importance of nature, and Imagination is key are three qualities of Romanticism. It is possible to see these qualities in William Blake’s poem “The Lamb.” Blake’s use of emphasizing a lamb in the poem is an attempt of referencing Christianity, where the lamb and the writer/reader are all creations of God. Blake also uses imagination as a way to describe a lamb as wells as compare a lamb to ourselves, as we both have similar gifts, abilities or traits from God.