Comparative analysis and contrasting perspectives

¶ … Lottery" with "The Ones that Walk Away from Omelas"

Both Shirley Jackson's short allegory "The Lottery" and Ursula Le Guin's narrative "The Ones that Walk Away from Omelas" address the theme of how certain cultural injustices are ignored by the citizens of their respective societies. The residents of the town in "The Lottery" do not like the fact that a random member of the town must die on a regular basis, so that the land will continue to prosper. However, they do not question that this barbaric practice is required and if it does not, they will lose everything. In Le Guin's tale, the dwellers of the fantastical land of Omelas permit the suffering of a single idiot child so that their paradise can continue.

Although the stories are works of fantasy and science fiction, respectively (one is deals with cultural myths in an apparently contemporary but remote and rural context, the other deals with scientific and human societal advances in the future) the two narratives highlight how, in American society, people who prosper ignore the suffering of everyday individuals. A person's prosperity, such as their ability to wear attractive and cheap clothing, may be dependant upon the oppression of women who labor under sweatshop conditions but because this ugly truth is not frequently highlighted in the media and because it seems remote, it is easily ignored. The tone of the stories, which is matter-of-fact rather than judgmental of the protagonists, makes this theme seem even more disturbing. The reader is forced to be outraged, rather than the people in the stories who accept the oppression.

However, in contrast to Jackson's narrative, some people are capable, in Le Guin's tale, of feeling disgusted by the treatment of the solitary child. They are the ones who walk away from Omelas. Also, Le Guin suggests that even those who stay do apprehend, on some level, the horror of what is being done. The narrator says the suffering of the child gives the culture of the land a certain compassion and depth that would otherwise be lacking. In contrast, the residents of the town of holding Jackson's lottery seem to take a certain savage glee as they begin the stoning, and the random choice of one of the residents has a certain poetic justice, because the woman would likely have willingly stoned the selected scapegoat with equal glee. The victim protests that it is not fair when it is her own fate that is at stake, not when another person might be selected.

The character's in Jackson's town are named, and have more distinguishing characteristics than the vague protagonists of Omelas. But because they are so utterly unaware of the moral consequences of their actions, the reader does not feel much compassion towards them, unlike the residents of Omelas who understand that their basis of happiness is morally corrupt. The residents of Omelas are all forced, by the laws of their society, to acknowledge the horror, and some even go back willingly to see the suffering and ignored child, to remind themselves of the basis of their happiness.

Jackson's residents are also more recognizably American, and like the reader's own neighbors, which make the story more terrifying, but also makes the central contention of the town seem more outrageous and unjust. The mob mentality is clearly misguided, and nothing will come of the woman's murder. The never-never land scenario of Omelas convinces the reader that according to the logic of this unreal world, the child must suffer for the strange and beautiful world to continue to exist, however odd this may seem according to conventional logic.