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Comparing 'The Most Dangerous Game' and 'The Lottery'

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Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" both attempt to provide their readers with the cruel truth regarding how it is typically human to express interest in cold-blooded acts. These two short stories discuss about people who see nothing wrong with promoting criminal behavior, but who eventually come to acknowledge the horrible position that the victim is in by experiencing it from a first-person perspective. Sanger Rainsford, and, respectively, Tessie Hutchinson are the central characters in these two stories and they are unable to complexly understand the situation that a victim is in until they actually realize that they are the victims. Reason does not emerge as an important value until the central characters realize that it is absurd for others to put across particular attitudes. Rainsford is reluctant to accept that it is wrong for him to kill animals and he simply sees his actions as a sport. Similarly, Tessie considers that it would be impossible for her to leave her home-town before getting the chance to visit the local store. This demonstrates that these two individuals fail to see matters from the perspective of someone who is threatened by his or her own actions. Even with this, Rainsford seems to be more cerebral when considering matters from this point of view, taking into account that he does not hesitate to express his horror at the thought of hunting human beings. In contrast, Tessie believes that it is very

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