“The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” are the two short stories by the authors Shirley Jackson and Ursula Le Guin analyzing the people’s faith towards sacrifice in their real world. Although written during separate times, Jackson and Guin both demonstrated the concept of sacrifice. They represent sacrifice as a concept that person as a subject to carry unwanted blame to benefit others.
Both stories depict that people of the respective towns must believe to choose one person to suffer for the sake of good for others. The use of a black box in “The Lottery”, and use of child”s life to please others in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a universal symbol of sacrifice in adherence to blind traditionThe shabby black box in “The Lottery” represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogical behavior of the villagers’ loyalty to it. The black box is nearly falling apart, hardly even black anymore after years of use and storage, but the villagers are unwilling to replace it. They base their attachment on nothing more than a story that claims that this black box was made from pieces of another, older black box.
