In both The Lottery and The Hunger Games, the dangers of blindly following tradition are portrayed. In The Lottery, once a year, all citizens of the village are required to meet in the square for the lottery. When a villager picks the paper with a dot out of the black box, the rest of the town must stone that person to death, but don’t question or recall why they do so. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use the stones.” In The Hunger Games, once a year they have “The Reaping” in the town square. One boy and one girl (referred to as ’the tribute’), between the ages of 12 and 18, are chosen to represent their district in the annual Hunger Games. The rules of the Hunger Games are “Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.” In both texts, the societies both follow tradition blindly, and consequently have to face death.


Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games both describe life in old fashioned societies and the aspects of it, both negative and positive.