"The Lottery" vs "The Whacking Day"

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is a short story about a town who would celebrate The Lottery day every June 27. Head of families would take papers from the black box, and whoever had the paper with the black dot, would get hit by the citizens with stones. The real plot and learning comes with Tessie, who at first was ok with this celebration, however when his husband got the dot paper, she was immediately against it. What's most interesting is that when they draw again, she gets the black paper dot, result: she gets hit by the entire town. They uphold this tradition because ancestors did it to have a successful harvest.

Matt Groening created The Simpsons, which is classified as a satirical show. In season four, episode twenty, he threw on air the satire of The Lottery, which would be called The Whacking Day. In this case it would be Lisa who since the beginning would be against it, however Bart, from his ignorant position would just be joyful to whack snakes. They said that this was a very important event, since the city founder, who was Irish, whacked lots of snakes to colonize. Later on the episode, Bart gets expelled from two schools, so Marge (his mom) would give his home school in which he would read a book who would lead him o understand that this tradition was all but true.

What this two pieces of literature and art leave us, is just a reminder of how society will do lots of things, and follow festivities and events, without even knowing its why, who, when, how, what,etc... They are just criticizing ignorance, as a whole society problem. the thing is not only of following this events, but agreeing with such things like almost killing someone randomly and purely innocent, which we can clearly see in The Lottery.

We can think of this like the Hunger Games. People do know the tradition and the why of this tradition, however only the Capitol will be totally agreeing and happy of it. How come, teenagers, who has just have around twelve to eighteen, be just taken out of a bowl and thrown into a game were they most likely be killed.

Anyway, both Matt Groening and Jackson did great and scary jobs. They are right, from our own ignorance we might be doing things with no inside, empty events and things. Our society is just full of the outside, not the inside. And obviously, society nowadays, will do what your friend, boyfriend, cousin, aunt,etc.. does, just because of lack of education.