Similarities Between The Lottery And The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin focus heavily on tradition and the great sacrifice of one person for the good of the community. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” the person who’s every aspect of happiness is sacrificed for the happiness of the whole town. In “The Lottery” a random individual is forced to sacrifice their life in order to maintain a tradition that the town has held for a significant amount of time. In both short stories the children are important and both texts create fronts of pleasantness when describing the setting in the opening sentences but the reader is later shocked by the brutality of the townsfolk who choose to continue to follow such a tradition.

“The Lottery” shows us that tradition is very important and should be upheld no matter the cost to the person or the community.

In this case the cost is great because it is a person’s life. The individual who wins the lottery which is done once a year is forced to be stoned to death and all the people in the town choose to blindly follow this absurd tradition because it is the only thing they have known to do all their lives without really thinking about the fact that they are killing someone who they most likely have known their entire lives. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” shows a child who is forced to sacrifice his or her happiness for that of the community’s. The child is put into grave conditions with little food or water and yet when seeing this people choose not to do anything because in doing so they would be jeopardizing the very foundation and happiness of the community, so in their minds what’s one’s happiness for the happiness of several thousand? Those who see this and decide that this tradition is terrible choose to walk away never to return. In “The Lottery” walking away doesn’t seem to be an option whereas in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” walking away is an option but at the same time their sacrificing their own comfortable life in their home in order to do this because seeing another sacrifice so much seems to be hard for them to

take.

Both texts seem to create a false front of pleasantness that is later discovered to be a way for the reader to become more comfortable reading the story because of the positive connotation.

This can be clearly shown in “The Lottery” when the Shirley Jackson opens with, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.” Reading this the last thing anyone would expect would be the brutal sacrifice of an individual. The same can be said for “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” when it opens with, “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags.” It’s a shaking awareness that although things seem a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the way it is. Tradition is the core of these short stories and that is evident as they both progress to the cruel realization that it’s difficult to escape tradition when it’s the one thing you have been grown up with

following.

The children in both these short stories play an important role because they are the ones who are expected to carry on the traditions that their ancestors had started. This is shown in “The Lottery” when it says, “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.” Those children who may not understand the full consequences behind their actions are just told that this is the way it has to be because it’s the tradition we follow in our society. Hearing that, it would be impossible for them to differ from right or wrong since this is the idea that they have grown up believing in and haven’t been exposed to anything that would challenge that. Similarly in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” the young children are usually, “those who come to see the child.” The young child who is the one forced to sacrifice himself for the society in which it lives. These young children are forced to see this and are expected to feel anger and shock at the sight but this is how they learn to value their own kids and appreciate the happiness they possess for it not for that child happiness may not had existed.

In conclusion, both these short stories demonstrate the fact that tradition should not be followed blindly and that change, however large it might be, can be a good thing. They could improve the lives of all those affected by such cruelty that these rituals bring and my learning the difference between right and wrong the lines won’t be so blurred anymore.