Similarities Between The Lottery And Dead Men's Path

“Tradition is the illusion of permanence” (Woody Allen). Tradition by definition is an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom) (Merriam-Webster). They are unwritten beliefs and duties that are passed on from generation to generation, and most of the time, they cannot be interpreted in a logical way. Traditions become a big part of individuals’ routine that they become very accustomed to. As a result, followers of said traditions would turn into systematic robots following long practiced traditions without questioning the ethicality behind them. This paper will compare and contrast two separate pieces of literature that both focus on the theme of tradition …show more content…
On the other hand, “Dead Men’s Path” is about an outsider who is a newly appointed school headmaster in a Nigerian village that wants to remove a path that crosses through his school that no one uses; clearly not understanding the value of tradition and the sentimental and spiritual value the path holds for the villagers. Despite the two stories revolving around the same theme, they still have both similarities and differences. The similarities include: sharing the duty of blindly following tradition, one given character who faces death due to the beliefs stated, and how the story starts versus how it ends, while the main differences lie in the tangibility of the beliefs, and the symbolism of the names and …show more content…
In “The Lottery”, the village’s vicious annually practiced tradition dictates that whoever gets the piece of paper with a black dot will face the unfortunate fate of dying. In the previously mentioned story, that character turns out to be Mrs.Tessie Hutchinson. While the character in “Dead Men’s Path” is also a woman, she dies - not as a result of tradition - but rather due to the fact that their known tradition was altered in some way. Since that path existed since before anyone could remember, it was thought to be used by spirits to depart our world and onto the next, used by their ancestors to visit them, and used by newly born babies to enter this world. When the new headmaster put some sort of a barricade around the entrance and exit of the path, it was believed by the villagers to have prevented a newly born child from entering the world which resulted in the mother dying in childbed. Both traditions and beliefs resulted in an untimely death but in one story (The Lottery) it was something that was anticipated while in the other (Dead Men’s Path) it was a tragic and unfortunate