What Are The Similarities Between The Hunger Games And The Lottery

“First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good.” (Liberalism and Its Critics). The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross, is about a society where children are randomly chosen every year to fight to the death as punishment for a past rebellion. “The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, is about a society where a villager is annually chosen at random to be stoned to death by the rest of the village as a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. While these stories are similar, they also differ in various ways. The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” have contrasting protagonists and tradition, but they have a similar selection process.

The protagonists of The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” are very different because they

have differing family values and personalities. For example, when Katniss’ sister was chosen as tribute during the selection process, she volunteers in her place to keep her sister from having to participate in the Hunger Games. Katniss cannot fathom her sister dying so she makes the choice to take her spot and risks her own life to ensure the safety of her sister. This shows how Katniss views her family as the most important thing in her life and how she is willing to do anything to keep them safe. She often puts herself in harm's way in order to ensure her sister will be safe. On the contrary, Mrs.Hutchinson from “The Lottery” is willing to put her family members in danger just to keep herself safe. One example of this is when Mrs.Hutchinson’s name gets picked and she says, “There’s Don and Eva. Make them take their chance.”(5). In this quote, Mrs.Hutchinson tries to get her daughter to choose a slip for their family to increase her odds of not being picked. She starts to panic that she may be chosen so she tries to do whatever possible to keep that from happening, even if that means risking her children’s lives. This illustrates how Mrs.Hutchinson values her life over her children’s lives. She does not have a strong connection to her family because she readily puts their lives in jeopardy in order to save herself. Katniss from The Hunger Games and Mrs.Hutchinson from “The Lottery” are very different protagonists because oftheir values and their behavior towards their families.
The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” have contrasting traditions because their reasoning for implementing them differs.

For instance, the reason behind the tradition of the Hunger Games is to keep the districts from rebelling again by always leaving them in fear. In the past there was a large and devastating rebellion against the Capitol. As punishment for this rebellion, the Capitol created the Hunger Games to keep the citizens from rebelling again by instituting a way to keep them in constant fear, this includes having only children be chosen and allowing only one child to come out alive. This demonstrates that the Capitol began this tradition as a way to keep the citizens in fear constantly. They want to have total control of their citizens so they will not rebel again, so they decide to create a tradition that leaves them to fear for their lives. In contrast, the tradition of the Lottery is not a punishment for the citizens, but instead is viewed as a necessary sacrifice for a good harvest. For example, during the picking of paper slips during the lottery, Old Man Warner says, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon...First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chicken and acorns.”(4). Old Man Warner says this quote during a conversation about surrounding villages giving up the lottery. He believes that the lottery is necessary in order to have a good harvest and he worries about what the outcome would be if there was no sacrifice. The reasoning behind the lottery stems from the a tradition that began long ago. The original settlers believed a human sacrifice was necessary to ensure a good harvest, so now a random citizen is chosen to die every year to continue tradition. The traditions in The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” are different because they arose due to very contrasting

reasons.
The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” have a similar selection process. One reason for this is in The Hunger Games, they meet at the town square at a specific time and names are pulled out of a glass jar to see who will be the next tribute. The people of the districts meet in the middle of the square annually and names are pulled out by someone to see who will be chosen for the Hunger Games. This shows that the people are forced to meet in the middle of the District and watch as someone randomly chooses two slips of paper from a jar to decide the next tributes for the Hunger Games. Similarly, the citizens of the society in “The Lottery” meet in the town square and papers are chosen at random to decide who has to die as a sacrifice. In the story, it says, “The people of the village began to gather in the square.” and then later says, “...the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.”(1) In this quote it is explained that the people in the village begin to gather around 10 o’clock in the morning in the middle of the town square. They also use a black box to keep the slips of paper in that are chosen to find out who will be stoned for the lottery. This illustrates how the selection process for the lottery includes the people gathering in the middle of the town and choosing paper slips to see who will be randomly chosen for the lottery. The selection process in The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” are comparable because they both include the town gathering together and names being drawn at random.
The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” have contrasting protagonists and tradition, but have a similar selection process. The protagonists differ because Katniss does everything to save her sister while Mrs.Hutchinson risks her kids’ lives for her own. The traditions are different because the Hunger Games is punishment for a rebellion while the lottery is a tradition created to ensure a good harvest. The selection process is similar because the towns gather in the square amd names are chosen randomly. While the idea of a random selection of a sacrifice seems equal, it takes away any sense of individual control. All rights are stripped away from the citizens because they have no control over whether they live or die.