The Whipping, Eveline, A Literary Analysis

The Whipping, Eveline, The Lottery and The Hunger Games are all works of literature that are connected by the use of abuse or torment in order to establish power and order. In The Hunger Games and The Lottery, governmental institutions establish their power over societies by selecting individuals who will face the chance of death. The Whipping and Eveline are works in which an individual uses brutality to establish dominance over other individuals. In dystopian societies portrayed in The Lottery and The Hunger Games, governments implement drawings that select individuals from society that will face death. The ability of the government to essentially control the fate of members of the community grants power to the institutions in charge of the rituals. As Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games explains it, the Capitol is “...taking kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch - this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion,” (Collins, 22). In The Lottery, the government demonstrates its authority by showing …show more content…
The author of The Whipping notes that the boy’s tears “...are rainy weather to wound-like memories,” (Hayden), implying that this beating was not the first he had received, and it brought back distasteful memories of previous occurrences. The effects of maltreatment are also discussed in Eveline, where the author points out that “even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her palpitations,” (Joyce). Even though Eveline was not abused directly by her father anymore, she still experiences mental hurt from the memories of when she