Fiction essay concepts and analysis

Lottery/Dangerous Game

A reader of both Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" must decide when can murder be an acceptable action. Is the tradition of an annual stoning acceptable? Is murder as a game acceptable? Is murder as self-defense acceptable? Each story asks the reader to understand the context in which the murders are taking place and to determine if the murders were justified.

"The Lottery" can be separated into to four distinct time segments -- the gathering, the preparation, the drawing and the aftermath. As the reader moves through the story, the dynamics amongst the neighbors change from a community to a group of individuals concerned with self-preservation and then back to a community.

The children arrived first followed by the men and then by the women. During the gathering in the town square, the men "stood together, & #8230; and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed." The women came last, sharing greetings with each other as they found their way to join their husband. When the women arrived, the town started to gather by family rather than by gender or age. Thus begins the separation from village to family.

As Mr. Summer, the town's civil leader, begins the preparations for the lottery, Mrs. Hutchinson joins the group. She stops briefly to exchange greetings with Mrs. Delacroix while others sent greetings to her husband noting her arrival, "Bill, she made it after all." Mr. Summer's cheerful commented "Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie." It is in this exchange that Jackson begins to use the characters' first name, making the characters more personal to the reader.

As the story progress to the drawing, the town people encourage one another as they step forward to draw from the box, however, the reader can sense something is off. Jackson describes the first person's actions after having drawn his slip of paper, "he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd where he stood a little apart from his family not looking down at his hand." The community, which had separated into families, now was separating from the families into individuals.

Bill Hutchinson has drawn the slip with the X on it and he or someone in his family will be selected. Tessie begins to protest: "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!" "Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance." Tessie is desperately trying to save herself.

The village moves from community to narrower groupings until the victim is selected. Each narrowing serves to separate the killers from the killed and the prospective victims from the actual victim. When Tessie is chosen, she is quickly stoned to death by the other town people and her family. The village deems murder to be an acceptable tradition… until it is you who is chosen.

The reader of "The Most Dangerous Game" is also faced with the question of the acceptability of murder. In this story, the definition of murder is expanded to include the murder of hunted animals and murder as a means of self-defense. During the voyage on the way to hunt jaguar, Rainsford and, his hunting companion, Whitney discuss their sport of hunting:

"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.

"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar."

"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?"

"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no understanding."

"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing -- fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death."

Later in the story, Rainsford becomes the hunted. He falls from the ship and swims to an island inhibited by General Zaroff, a game hunter. General Zaroff engages Rainsford in a hunt with Rainford as the unwilling prey. Rainsford is now living out the conversation he had with Whitney: he is the jaguar. General Zaroff hunts humans and Rainsford is his next prize. He claims the hunt for humans is much more satisfying because a human's fear of being killed is so great. Rainsford quickly learns that prey, at least of the human kind, do have feelings -- bewilderment, fear and revenge. Rainsford cleverly outsmarts General Zaroff and ultimately, Rainsford kills Zaroff in self-defense, the same rational that Zaroff used to explain the killing of a large Cape buffalo who had charged at him. Murder as self-defense was acceptable to both the main characters.