“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both illustrate the dangers of blindly following rituals. practices and traditions. The stories involve the use of an institutionalized drawing system, used to blindly choose a sacrifice for the respective societies. “The Hunger Games” uses a system called the Harvest, which allows two teenagers to be selected to participate in gladiatorial combat to the death. Similarly, in “The Lottery,” the lottery system allows a town to nominate a sacrifice who will then be stoned. Both systems use a combination of atmosphere and dialogue, references to chaos preceding order, and characterization of authority figures to depict the results of communities mindlessly submitting to the practices of tradition. The result of these systems is that individual members of that community must bear the consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In both stories, societies treat the lottery and the harvest with an attitude of deference and veiled apprehension. The atmosphere surrounding these events demonstrates communities' feelings of anxiety about the ceremonies, despite an apparent reluctance to change them. In each story, the writers create a disturbing atmosphere through the behavior and dialogue of the characters. The characters joke before the events, but gradually become more solemn as the drawings draw closer. In "The Hunger Games", Gale and Katniss laugh while imitating the ceremony and its leader Effie Trinket. However, Katniss notes that they are only joking "because the alternative is to be afraid" (6). As a result, the inhabitants of “The Lottery” smile and chat, “talking about planting and rain” (1). . This nervous attitude becomes increasingly solemn as the ceremonies approach and is intended to hide underlying feelings of fear about what the harvest and lottery represent, the idea of ​​imminent sacrifice and death for those selected. . In both stories, the characters' reactions to the formalities of the services indicate that they are overly familiar with the rites of the traditions. In “The Lottery,” the townspeople appear complacent when reading the instructions, “having done it so many times they were only half-listening” (3). Repetition of this ensures that they have internalized its rituals. In "The Hunger Games", the mayor also reads "the same story every year" during the harvest, and everyone in the community knows the story of the Games and their history, as well as the rituals of the Games. ceremony itself. In the stories, the characters all share a similar sense of terror toward the rituals, but the events are so institutionalized that no one attempts to question them. In each story, authority figures use references to past chaos to emphasize the importance of rituals in maintaining order. and prevent rollback. Old Man Weaver functions as this character for the townspeople in "The Lottery", and he notes that if institutions like the lottery were not in place, they might revert to an uncivilized way of life and "live in caves" (4). His justification is that “there has always been a lottery,” and he relies solely on the foundations of the importance of tradition to support his claims (4). Similarly, in "The Hunger Games", the mayor alludes to the "dark days" and the disorder of the uprisings preceding the implementation of the.