A Comparison Of The Lottery 'And The Beacon'

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Dark Traditions carried along through times As human behavior evolves, societies develop new patterns of conduct popularly accepted, however, the isolation of some societies and the strengthening of particular customs could make change and progress a hard thing to achieve. Such is the case of a chapter from the famous television series The Twilight Zone titled “The Beacon” written by Martin Pasko and Rebecca Parr, contrasted with Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” from the book “Literature” A portable Anthology. Both stories give us a whole perspective of how a paradigm could be inserted into a society and conserve itself throughout many generations no matter what the moral consequences could be. Primarily, both “The Beacon” and “The Lottery”…show more content…
Cooperjames from “The beacon” and Mr. Summers from “The Lottery”, who are both are responsible for keeping the tradition alive, and executing most of the activities of the ritual, there is a particular difference between the two stories in terms of how the rituals could be morally criticized by the viewer and lector respectively. In “The Beacon” the character of Dr. Barrows who is an outsider and not a member of the village, strongly objects and ever interferes with the beacons will by curing the chosen little girl who was supposed to die, with that happened the villagers decided to carry on with the ritual and kill Dr. Barrows in place of the little girl. On the other hand, in “The Lottery”, it is one of the village member Mrs. Hutchinson who tries to avoid the ceremony by forgetting the date and then arriving late to the event with a suspicious attitude of excusing herself, and even after her family draws the black dot she continuously showed signs of disagreement by saying “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!” and she continues to argue the unfairness of the ceremony, but she doesn’t do anything about it and accepts that’s the way the ritual has always been and she is stoned. Even though, in both stories appears to be a sense of acceptance of the ritual among people, there is still a space for the lector/viewer to morally weigh in the

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