I always connect "The Lottery" with Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." These stories are both based on the idea that if we sacrifice one person, everyone else can have a good life. In Le Guin's story, no one is stoned to death, but the poor creature that is captive might as well have been stoned to death, since this child leads such a miserable life. In both stories, there is no one arguing that this "tradition" must cease. In "The Lottery" the only opposition that surfaces is from the victim, understandably, and in "Omelas," those who find this tradition distasteful do not speak out against it. They merely walk away, so they can avoid the moral dilemma. Also, both stories have settings that could be anywhere, deliberately vague, so the reader understands that these horrors could happen any time and any place.
I believe that a solid connection can be made between Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. They are definitely not identical, but they do share some basic characteristics.
The lottery drawing and the reaping are both annual events. In both events, the townspeople are asked to gather in a public area. Names are randomly drawn, and nobody wants his or her name to be drawn. Having your name drawn is not a good thing in either story. In Jackson's story, it's an immediate death sentence. In the other story, there is some time that passes before being thrown into an arena where all except one person will die. In both stories, the annual tradition is carried on because of something that happened long ago in the past.
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