Humans Dislike Breaking Tradition
Our daily lives follow a traditional pattern. When given an option that leads toward change, people will choose the one that does not lead to change, they don’t want to break their traditional life pattern. Mauro Senesi, author of “The Giraffe” approaches this theme of change differently than Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery”. However, while reading these stories it became clear that both infer that these choices stem from the fear of consequences that comes with change. Along with the disruption in authority for the community. Everyone learns to fear the consequences that comes with the decisions. Change has consequences, whether one believes it or not, sometimes good, others bad. In both stories, …show more content…
If a child takes the lead in a changing world, it’s likely that adults will not have the same authority as the leading child. In the two stories, it is prevalent that the adults or elders want to have power and respect. However, in “The Giraffe”, it’s the boys that gain power in contrast to the story “The Lottery” where the younger generation listens to the village elder. As said by the narrator in “The Giraffe”, “Rolandino especially was happy when the giraffe—letting its head droop low—made someone go running” (Senesi). This is a huge show of disruption in authority as normally, it’s the children that run from adults. Over here, the boys are scaring the adults with the giraffe; for the adults to attain their authority back they need to remove the giraffe from the community. Again, viewing the giraffe as a metaphor for a person from another ethnicity, the adults do not want to share their power with an outsider, even more so when the outsider appears to have more power than the adults of the village, hence they conclude to kill the thing disrupting their power. Although this was the case for “The Giraffe’, “The Lottery” is very different. Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that” to Mrs. Adams after she says, “Some places have already quit the lotteries”, showing his discontent with the other towns changing but glad that his town listens to him (Jackson). However, if they change and stop the lottery, the town will have no reason to listen to him when they have a good harvest season without the lottery, changing the power from the more conservative elder to the more liberal generation. All in all, people’s importance will change if they lose power; authority means a lot to the human
Our daily lives follow a traditional pattern. When given an option that leads toward change, people will choose the one that does not lead to change, they don’t want to break their traditional life pattern. Mauro Senesi, author of “The Giraffe” approaches this theme of change differently than Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery”. However, while reading these stories it became clear that both infer that these choices stem from the fear of consequences that comes with change. Along with the disruption in authority for the community. Everyone learns to fear the consequences that comes with the decisions. Change has consequences, whether one believes it or not, sometimes good, others bad. In both stories, …show more content…
If a child takes the lead in a changing world, it’s likely that adults will not have the same authority as the leading child. In the two stories, it is prevalent that the adults or elders want to have power and respect. However, in “The Giraffe”, it’s the boys that gain power in contrast to the story “The Lottery” where the younger generation listens to the village elder. As said by the narrator in “The Giraffe”, “Rolandino especially was happy when the giraffe—letting its head droop low—made someone go running” (Senesi). This is a huge show of disruption in authority as normally, it’s the children that run from adults. Over here, the boys are scaring the adults with the giraffe; for the adults to attain their authority back they need to remove the giraffe from the community. Again, viewing the giraffe as a metaphor for a person from another ethnicity, the adults do not want to share their power with an outsider, even more so when the outsider appears to have more power than the adults of the village, hence they conclude to kill the thing disrupting their power. Although this was the case for “The Giraffe’, “The Lottery” is very different. Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that” to Mrs. Adams after she says, “Some places have already quit the lotteries”, showing his discontent with the other towns changing but glad that his town listens to him (Jackson). However, if they change and stop the lottery, the town will have no reason to listen to him when they have a good harvest season without the lottery, changing the power from the more conservative elder to the more liberal generation. All in all, people’s importance will change if they lose power; authority means a lot to the human