Running head: FICTION ESSAY
1
Crystal Renaud
Liberty University
Fiction Essay:
The Unluckiest of Short Stories
FICTION ESSAY2
Thesis: In the beginning, the short stories “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” do
not appear to be similar in tone, structure or conflict, but in the end have many similarities
that lead to a character’s unlucky demise.
“The Lottery” by American author Shirley Jackson and “The Rocking-Horse Winner”
by English author D.H. Lawrence are two works of fiction. “The Lottery” was published in
1948 while “The Rocking-Horse Winner” was published 15 years earlier in 1933. In the
I.The tone of each of the short stories started out differently, but in the end both stories
took a dark turn.
a.“The Lottery” began with a light-hearted tone with what seemed to be a
community preparing for something fun, but ended in an unexpected, dark way.
b.“The Rocking-Horse Winner” began in a depressing tone with a mother
unsatisfied with her life, picked up in the middle through the love of her child, but
eventually ended more depressing than had it begun.
II.The structure of each of the short stories begins with an element of mystery that engages
the reader to want to know more.
a.“The Lottery” built up a lot of mystery while leading up to the main idea of what
was going on in the community, but in the end, there still seemed to be more
questions than answers.
b.“The Rocking-Horse Winner” had some mystery as well, but it didn’t take long to
gain clarity of what was going on.
III.Each of the short stories contains a conflict related to death, but the conflict is not
immediately known in the beginning.
a.“The Lottery” is written in such a way that you don’t realize there is a conflict
until the very end.
b.“The Rocking-Horse Winner” is written in such a way that there is a sense of a
conflict from the very beginning.
Fiction Essay: The Unluckiest of Short Stories
Comparing the Structure
The structure is the way in which a literary is organized. “The Lottery” and “The
Rocking-Horse Winner” are organized similarly in that they are both structured
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beginning, the short stories “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” do not appear to
be similar in tone, structure or conflict, but in the end have many similarities that lead to a
character’s unlucky demise. With so much dissimilar and yet eerily similar between the two
short stories, they make for an interesting pairing to compare and contrast.
Comparing the Tone
According to Kennedy & Gioia (2016), “a writer's tone plays an important role in
establishing the reader's relationship to the characters or ideas presented in a literary
work" (p. 45).
The tone of “The Lottery” began in a lighthearted way where we are watching a
small town prepare for an annual lottery with young boys collecting rocks and mothers gossiping
in the street. Where the tone begins to take a turn is when the opinion over the lottery begins to
vary. The reader can sense something is coming, but what the reader does not expect is for a
member of the town to be ritualistically murdered by the other members of the town. The happy
tone of a close-knit town paired with a ritualistic murder is a tone of irony in this story. The tone
of “The Rocking-Horse Winner” began in a depressing tone with a mother unsatisfied with her
life and describing herself as unlucky even though she had a husband, children, and a home. The
tone lightened up in the middle of the story as her son won horse racing bets and began to prove
to his mother that he was lucky. However, the boy’s luck ran out when he died of brain injury in
his mother’s arms. The tone of each of the short stories began in different ways, but toward the
end they each take turn a dark turn. With many differences, it is actually the dark turn of a
character’s death that connects these stories the most.
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thematically. From the beginning of each of the stories the reader is drawn in with a
knowing that something is significant is going to happen to one or more of the characters.
The way in which the characters are developed gives the impression that not everything is
as it seems. There’s an element of mystery that keeps the reader engaged and interested in
finding out what that is going to happen. The thematic structure of
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” differs from
“The Lottery” in that it began nearly as depressing as it ended. The only hope within “The
Rocking-Horse Winner” is when the boy begins to win his horse race bets and think of
himself as lucky. What is not expected is that this boy would die in the end. While the
structures of these two stories are different, they unite in similarity with a dark and
depressing ending.
Comparing the Conflicts
According to Kennedy & Gioia (2016), a conflict is “the central struggle between two
or more forces in a story... [and] opposition can arise from another character, external
evens, preexisting situations, fate, etc." (p. 12). Conflict does not escape either of the short
stories presented in this essay. The conflict in “The Lottery” is the lottery itself. In a town
that appeared to be idyllic, there was a dark ritual of killing one of their members each year.
As a reader, we don’t know why this lottery has to happen. The conflicts in “The Rocking-
Horse Winner” are several. Right from the beginning there is a conflict between the mother
and the dissatisfaction she feels in her life. This dissatisfaction trickles down to her
“The Lottery” had a lot of
mystery because the reader was not told what the lottery was until the very end. While some of
the characters discussed the lottery and whether or not it should still occur, no one explained
what the lottery was or why it had to occur. As a result, at the end of the story there still more
questions than answers. The thematic structure of
Conclusion
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children, mainly her son, who begins to take this conflict on himself. Ultimately it is this
conflict that leads to his untimely demise. The short stories are most closely connected by
their conflicts of death.
“The Rocking-Horse Winner”. Both stories are an excellent example to show
that things are not always as they seem.
References
Kennedy & Gioia. (2016). Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.
Custom 8th ed. Boston: Pearson.
Each of the short stories contains a conflict related to death, but the
conflict is not immediately known in the beginning.
As the reader examines these two short stories it is not difficult to identify the differences
and the similarities. One story has a tone full of mystery and ends in absolute horror, while the
other story remains depressing from the start. Most notably is it “The Lottery” that leaves the
reader with more questions than answers. Why does the world in which this town resides need a
lottery like this? What is going on in the world that this sort of lottery is necessary? Why did the
town next door discontinue the lottery but other towns haven’t? Certainly it would make the
reader be thankful that this is not the world in which they live. While on the other hand, no one
would want to live in a household marred by dissatisfaction and the insecurity of lacking income
as described in
