In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” both stories share a common theme which is that the dangers of blindly following traditions lead to terrible consequences and ignorance.
In both societies they share a tradition of cruel and murderous behaviour. This leads to jeopardizing of young lives for the sake of tradition. In “The Lottery” their tradition is to stone a person chosen at random in a lottery. This leads to a young girl being chosen and stoned without another thought as quote “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a clear space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair”, she said. A stone hit her on the side of her head”. In “The Hunger Games” children are picked out of a lottery from each district to fight to the death. In the story capitol shows a video explaining the tradition of the game and how it must be followed no matter what. In both cases it shows that keeping traditions blinded them so much that even sacrificing young lives wasn’t a matter.
Both stories they use cruel traditions to keep people in control and prevent change. In “The Lottery” Old man Warner says "It's not the way it used to be [...] People ain't the way they used to be" this implies keeping the things the way they are in the town and keeping the tradition was what they wanted and they had a fear of chaos without the tradition. In “The Hunger Games” they use their tradition to keep people in fear and control as quote "Taking kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch - this is the Capitol way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy". Both stories show tradition gives fear to keep people in control and prevent change.
In these both stories they both depict how this cruel tradition is seen as a form of entertainment and joy. I “The Lottery” Children gathered up stones and along with every on else in the town threw rocks at Tesse who was chosen in the lottery. This shows how everyone is ignorant to see the cruelty being portrayed and sees it as entertainment. In “The Hunger Games” the game is being broadcasted all over the world as a reality show , by showing kids killing each other. This depicts exploiting their tradition as entertainment and not seeing the cruelty of it.
Both stories portray exploiting killing as entertainment and shows that blindly following traditions leads to terrible consequences and ignorance whether its stoning or murder.
