Similarities Between The Hunger Games And The Lottery

There are many similarities in, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Both books show many similarities in relation to the themes, characters, and settings. These two authors are a prime example of how two situations in different eras in time can posses many similarities despite their differences.

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there are two different main universal themes: sacrifice and unmindfulness. In this story, the villagers gather annually and perform a ritual of sacrifice. The villagers gather around in the main part of the town, and the head of each family draws a white piece of paper. Whoever draws the piece of paper with a black dot drawn on it will then have each member of their family

draw again, and whoever gets that same piece of paper will be the sacrifice. They do this based purely on the fact that it is a tradition, they don’t actually have a reason or rhyme behind it. It seems like the villagers do this out of fear that going against the traditions of the village might bring them bad luck, or maybe even death. The traditions that they practice are realistically taken to the extreme and completely unnecessary, but to these people, they are completely normal practices.

The reason why unmindfulness is considered a universal theme is because, even in modern society, there are old traditions that are practiced everyday without any reason behind them. For example, every year on Christmas, children are made to believe in Santa Clause and presented with presents from him on the morning of Christmas Day. The reason behind this tradition is to replicate the giving of gifts from the three wise men in Christianity. Today, most people don’t even realize there is an original tradition and reason behind gift giving, they just do it because that’s the way things have always been done. Another example, very similar to the tradition in The Lottery, would be eating certain foods on New Year's Day to ensure good luck all year. In the south, it’s an age old tradition to eat black eyed peas and cabbage to bring health, prosperity, and wealth all year. This tradition originates back to confederate soldiers and their families considering themselves lucky to have beans to eat when times were hard and this was all they had. The eating of cabbage has only been incorporated because it blooms around the time of New Years, not because it is thought to bring

wealth. However, it is a well known tradition in the south to eat these two things to bring luck in the new year. In “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, there is a very similar tradition practiced to that of “The Lottery.” This book takes place in Panem, a community broken into twelve factions that are all run by the central government. The whole series is based around an annual ritual the faction perform. The tradition starts out with each faction selecting two people, under the age of 18, to be sent into the hunger games. After weeks of prep and training in the capitol, all twenty four kids are thrown into a predetermined arena to fight to the death until one person remains. The games are broadcasted all over North America as a form of entertainment.
In both stories, there is no meaningful reason behind the barbaric traditions they perform in these communities, they are simply tradition that is not to be messed with or altered out of fear that there could be severe consequences.