Comparing Tradition In The Lottery And A Rose For Emily
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Novelist Chinua Achebe once stated, "When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries you don’t just turn it off one day." However, sometimes traditions cause innocent people to suffer.This is shown in the short stories, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. In these short stories, tradition has several negative consequences.Tradition negatively effects the protagonists, their families, and the society.
Firstly, Tradition has tragic effects on the protagonists in both stories. For example, in "The Lottery," Tessie is a victim of a cruel tradition of getting stoned to death. She is left in the square to beg and repeat, "It isn't fair"(Jackson 302). She is powerless as no one else supports…show more content… Society, where society is troubled by the man. As the protagonists become part of the tradition they begin to give trouble to the society.In "The Lottery," it is Tessie vs. Society, in other words it is Tradition vs. Change where Tessie demands a change while the society pursues the tradition..For instance, Tessie arrives late to the lottery, which angers the people of the village. Though she gets away with excuses like, "Clean forgot what day it was"(Jackson 296). Tessie clearly does not want to pursue the tradition, but she is helpless as no one else supports her. The old man represents the society in "The Lottery," as he is the oldest and the most respected villager. He calls the villages who give up the lottery, "Pack of crazy fools" (Jackson 298).Clearly, this society is against the idea of change. On the other hand, in "A Rose for Emily," the society questions and complains about Emily, thus it is Emily vs. Society. For example, Emily's neighbors complain about the smell coming from her house and the council complains as Emily does not pay her taxes. Also, Emily gives a hard time to the druggist from whom she buys arsenic from. She refuses to answer his questions, therefore the druggist states, "The law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for" (Faulkner 207).However, she ends up getting the arsenic by "looking him eye for eye, until he looked away and went