Comparing The Lottery And The Night Drive

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The possible chance an athlete can win a gold medal at the Olympics motivates them to train and work hard for it before the competition. Just like an athlete is motivated by a gold medal, the characters in the two short stories “The Lottery” and “The Night Drive” are motivated by different forces. What forces in “The Lottery” and “The Night Drive” motivate characters to act as they do in these two short stories? Fear and stress are the first forces that motivate the characters in “The Night Drive”. “She pressed on the accelerator and found herself offering an agonized prayer that the man beside her in a woman’s dress wouldn’t notice until she had caught up with it.” This quote is from “The Night Drive” by Will F. Jenkins, which shows Mary is …show more content…

The second force in “The Night Drive” is revenge. “Bob isn’t back at the filling station.” This quote is from “The Night Drive” by Will F. Jenkins. The context behind this quote is that Bob killed Mr. Tabor’s (Eunice) wife. So because Bob had done that, Mr. Tabor was seeking revenge for his wife by killing Bob. We don’t know for sure that Mr. Tabor killed Bob, but we can infer that he did from this quote. Mr. Tabor, seeking revenge for his wife, motivates him to kill Bob. The final force is tradition, which can be seen in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. “Making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” and “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.“ The backstory of these two quotes is that a small town has continued their lottery for years because they think it gives them healthy crops even though the person who “wins” this lottery is stoned to death. This is how the force of tradition motivates the townspeople to keep doing their lottery even if it is cruel and kills the

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