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Engl 102 Fiction Essay

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ENGL 102 Fiction Essay

Liberty University Online

Micheal McIntosh

Fiction Essay

The first of the two stories I chose to compare and contrast is titled “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and the second story is titled “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence. I will compare each of their themes, characters, and plot developments in which they are both similar and different. One of the strongest comparison would be that both stories deal with the subject of luck in one sense or another. The Lottery being considered a game of chance in which luck plays an important factor in being the chosen winner but Luck in the Lottery has a different twist of fate because the winner of the Lottery is actually the …show more content…

Looking at both stories, the Lottery appears to be a means of how the town remain at a low population and that the Lottery was a way of controlling that population. The Rocking-Horse Winner on the other hand uses gambling as an alternative to making money and that money is earned by being lucky and that you had to have an imagination in order to possess this luck. The Lottery focused its story around an ancient black wooden box that held the Lottery choices within it and the Rocking-Horse Winner was focused upon an old style Rocking Horse that was often used by children long ago and something that is not used today that often. Both endings of each story were odd enough whereas in the Lottery, the death of another person came as a ritual that was expected to happen so very often and in the Rocking-Horse Winner, Master Paul, the woman’s son sought the approval of his Mother concerning his having luck. The boy died that night and the Mother had not acknowledged that she knew that her son was lucky even though she was eighty –odd thousand to the good. Very odd turn of events in both stories and both had unusual endings in which there seems to be that type of contrast. Not that they were similar in story form but that they both ended in sadness. Of the two stories, I would choose the Rocking-Horse Winner as the favorite of the two due to the fact that the Lottery goes against the belief that I

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