Important Lessons of Character from Short Stories
Important Lessons of Character from Short Stories
“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.” The way Shirley Jackson in “The Lottery” and “The One Who Walks Away From Omelas” by Ursula Leguin uses literary techniques in a very unique way. These two short stories apply to the following quote. This quote means that a person might not know what to do in a situation and but people will judge that person by the way they act. This statement is valid because few people are leaders and stand up for what they believe in. They would all rather be like everyone else and follow them. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The One Who Walks Away From Omelas” by Ursula Leguin are pieces of literature that can be applied to this quote through literary techniques and elements.
The two literary techniques that connect the quote with this story are characterization and theme. “The Lottery” is about a town coming together for small town lottery. The word lottery usually means something good. In this short story that is not the case. The lottery in this story means something bad. Every man of the family draws a card out of a box and hopefully it is blank. If they end up getting the card that has a big black dot, then their family has to pick cards out of the box. The one person in that family that gets the card with the big black dot on it they get stoned to death by the rest of the town. This applies to the quote because in the town no one knows what to do when that one person has drawn to be stoned to death. When one person acts and throws the first stone at the particular person everyone else has no idea what to do so they follow everyone else. Shirley Jackson describes the little girl as whinny and trying to get out of being picked for the stoning describes the characterization in this short story. She repeated “it wasn’t fair.” The theme applies to the quote because the citizens. They realize, it has been going on for a long time. They know it has no...