Essay Comparing The One Who Walk Away From Omelas And The Lottery

The characters in “The One Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “The Lottery” are naturally selfish and always put themselves before others regardless of their feelings. Selfishness is the idea of excessively caring about one’s self as opposed to simultaneously caring for other people and other things. Well, in the story “The One Who Walk Away From Omelas”, where people lives in an utopia, they are forever happy at the expense of one miserable child. Also with the story “The Lottery”, where a town does an annual event called the lottery to sacrifice one person for the harvest of the town. They have the same theme, the theme of how people are naturally selfish and always put themselves before others, regardless of how other people feel. Tessie and

the citizens of Omelas are selfish because they don’t want to give up on what’s already there; they don’t care much about the situation, and they are willing to sacrifice someone else.
People don’t really care about other people's feelings or what others are going through until it comes down to happen to them.

This is what happened to Tessie, she didn’t care about the lottery. It states in the story, “Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulder, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. ‘clean forgot what day it was,’ she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly” (Jackson). This quote shows what was on Tessie’s mind. The lottery is an annual event, but Tessie decided to come late and then just laughed about it like it was not a big deal. To her, chores and her personal stuffs were more important than the lottery. Her action shows that she is selfish, and kind of disrespectful, by coming late to the

lottery.
On the other side, the people of Omelas were the same as Tessie, they are also selfish and neglect the needs and feelings of other people. Their happiness comes from the miserable child, but the people don’t really care about him. They know that the child is there, but they never went to help him/her out, because they just want to keep the happiness that’s already there. As it is described in the story, “In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect” (Le Guin). This explained the whole idea of not caring about him/her. They even called him/her a “it”. An article in The New York Times said, “When we buy a cellphone or a piece of cheap clothing, there is some exploited worker — a child in the basement. We tolerate exploitation, telling each other that their misery is necessary for overall affluence, though maybe it’s not” (Brooks David). Often, people are being selfish by trying to keep their happiness even though they know that there is someone suffering for their happiness.
There are other ways of showing the selfishness of a person, for instance Tessie. When her family picked up the paper with a black dot on it, she was so scared that she would be the one going for the lottery, meaning she would get stoned to death. So she volunteered her children for the lottery, because she was afraid to die, and does not want that to happen. She wanted to decrease the chances of getting kill as much as possible so she did everything she could to get out of it, including volunteering her children. Tessie screamed on the top of her lungs, “‘There’s Don and Eva,’ Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. ‘Make them take their chance!’” (Jackson). Don and Eva are Tessie’s children, Tessie does not want herself to be in the lottery, so she sacrifice her children.
Sacrifice also happened in the the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”.

All of the laughter and happiness came from the suffer of this poor little child. Omelas sacrificed that child for the good of everyone else. The moment this child was born, he/she never got a taste of happiness or the love he/she deserves. The ones who stay in Omelas treated the child badly, even though he/she is the one that gave them the hope and happiness. This is sadly said in the story, “but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skills of their makers, ever the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin). It is clearly said that they all know the miserable child is there suffering, but they just stood and watch him, because they need the sacrifice of this child to make everyone happy and

smile.
Albert Camus once said, “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others” (Richford, Nannette). But is that right? Or If oneself only cares about themselves is actually wrong? Being selfish makes the people around you suffer and the ones who actually care, sad. Tessie and the people of Omelas in the stories “The Lottery” and “The One Who Walk Away From Omelas” show the perfect ideas of selfishness by not caring about others, sacrificing others for the good of your own and not willing to share. These are bad, because of their selfishness, they are never truly happy. But us, human beings are naturally selfish, how can we be selfless? Or can we be selfless in order to find our true happiness?

Works Cited
Brooks, David. "The Child in the Basement." The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 Jan. 2015. Web. 9 Nov. 2015. .
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, 1991. 291-302.
Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." The Wascana Anthology of
Short Fiction. Eds. Ken Mitchell, Thomas Chase, and Michael Trussler. Regina:
Canadian Plans Research, 1999. Print.
Richford, Nannette. "In the Direction of Dreams." To Be Happy, We Must Not Be Too Concerned with Others. Albert Camus. N.p., 7 Jan. 2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2015. .