The Lottery, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Use of Force Essay Example

changing tradition. Symbolism in The Lottery revolves around this theme of tradition. Within the concept of the black box, and this annual event, the reader may see a landscape which resembles a way of thinking that has been surpassed and replaced with, what one may assume to be, a more civilized approach to society. Even within the story line, the audience is speaking about how in some villages they have been thinking about doing away with the lottery, and in other villages they don’t do it anymore at all. Thus, Mrs. Hutchinson’s cries at the close of the story may be recognized as a plea to change the tradition.

The symbolism in her being late is juxtaposed with her being the one who draws the slip of paper with the black mark upon it. She has been black listed in a fashion, ostracized with that slip of paper and her penalty is the annual tradition of the town: stoned to death. The evilness of the story is reflected in how casual the events are laid out. When Mrs. Hutchinson protests her stoning, the children, the men and the women carry on different conversations that are out of sequence with the event which is happening around them. It seems that the black box represents a tradition but at the same time this tradition is so normal to the people of the village they can stone a person and still perform conversation etiquette in the midst of Mrs. Hutchinson’s pain.

The villager’s response to this tradition is a symbol of how people do not like to change, will protest change no matter if it could

be for the better, and would do away with a barbaric tradition such as stoning. Oddly however, it would seem that Mrs. Hutchinson did not previously protest any other lotteries until it was her name that was called. The nature of evil that is found in Poe’s short story The Cask of Amontillado revolves just as Shirley Jackson’s story, around the nature of humanity and the capacity to be cruel. As is typical for Poe’s style of writing, he has the narrator give the reader the perspective of evil that runs thematic through the story.

It is not the argument of evil existing that is the focal point of this paper and the analysis of these short stories, but rather it is the extent of evil that overwhelms the readers as they delve into these short stories. In Poe’s case, evil is so defined that the reader bears witness to the narrator entombing Fortunato alive. In this instance, the gruesome facts of evil, of the narrator’s predisposition of evil, leave no room for the misinterpretation of the existence of evil and the extent to which it is relished by the narrator, by the townsfolk (of Jackson’s story). It isn’t in the narrator’s indecision (he keeps asking Fortuanto if he wants to turn back because of his health, thus freeing both from Fortunato’s demise) but in the fact that the narrator goes ahead with committing this atrocious crime.

In the instance of Poe’s narrator the man is truly a psychopath for envisioning this death and for going through with it so closely with Fortunato (the way the narrator allows the old man to lean

on him as they pass through the catacombs); this closeness to his victim suggests a twisted sense of cruelty and further supports the claim of this paper as evil existing. In Williams’ story The Use of Force the introduction of evil is engaged with the idea of the struggle between a little girl and a doctor. The prevailing sense of shame involved in the story and by extension evil through the doctor’s sense of glee in torturing the little girl is what dominants Williams’ tale.

He gives the doctor first a sense of propriety in the story of coming to the rescue of the little girl who may have diphtheria, but in an opposing sense the doctor becomes this maniac in the story, going beyond reason in order to have a look at the little girl, Mathilda’s, tonsils. The doctor even has the father hold down his daughter, and the doctor takes his tongue depressor all down her throat until she chomps on it and puts it asunder. At this, the doctor is further enrages and wont’ listen to sense but continues the inquest, until finally, defeated the little girl’s throat is found out to have a membrane on it. Evil has conquered. In each of these stories it is the fact that the characters act out irrationally from civilization that the undercurrent of evil is found to be thematic.

The town folk in Jackson’s story, stone people to death once a year as a tradition, the narrator in Poe’s story murders a man by entombing him thus giving him a slow death of starvation, dehydration, exposure or suffocation (whichever comes first) and

Williams’ story suggests torturing a child; in each instance, evil is predominant in the story. In each case the evil nature of humanity is predominant, is found in the seemingly most innocent of occurrences such as a town meeting, a historical walk through tunnels, and a doctor’s visit; but the guise of this innocence only further elaborates and underscores how evil these situations, and these people are. Through evil in the stories it can be seen how even the most commonplace of events can house a sinister inner narrative.