The Concept of Sacrifice in Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
A sacrifice means an offering of a thing of value in return for something, usually one of greater value than the offering. History records various pagan rites of sacrifice and some religions still practice them today. Usually these rites stem from the belief that the act honor the gods and make them favor the ones who perform the sacrifice. Most often, the sacrifice is made by slaughtering and burning an animal such as a sheep or goat accompanied by chanting or dancing. However, history also relates of instances when humans instead of animals were sacrificed but in all these records, the sacrifices have religious meanings behind them. The short stories, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson take for their subject matter, two forms of human sacrifices that are social instead of religious in essence. The respective communities in these stories perform traditions that seek to honor the society and preserve the social order.
LeGuin’s short story is set in the fictional town of Omela. It is a utopian society where people are constantly in high spirits so much so that “they do not say the words of cheer much any more (Le Guin).” The society regards joy, goodness, and all other desirable emotions as being in existence because of the absence of unhappiness, evil, pain and other undesirable emotions. It is not a sign of immaturity, lack of intelligence or stupidity to accept and lead a life with this seemingly simplistic logic. According to the narrator, the problem of normal societies like ours is our inability to accept that happiness can be permanent and that evil can be banished voluntarily. The non-Omelan person thinks that when one is happy today, surely sadness will follow sooner or later. Sure enough, it would but because it was willed. The catch, however, is that Omelas keeps a young child in a locked, dark, and dirty room where he experiences a life full of despair, pain, dirt, and illness. All the people of Omelas know he exists; they are introduced to him the first time when they reach a certain age. Some choose to come back and see him; others put his memory at the back of their minds and prefer their happy, contented lives. They know that they owe their happiness to the little child’s hard life. He is a scapegoat which bears despair in behalf of the entire society. He eases their conscience and makes cheerfulness a pleasing experience.
In Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the victim of the sacrificial act is whoever picks the paper with the black mark on it. It is a festive annual occasion when everyone in the village gets a chance of being picked and subjected to the deadly and violent ritual of being stoned to death. It is a sacred and traditional ritual for the village people although “so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded (Jackson).” The idea of this type of human sacrifice recalls pagan rites from the past. However, at least it is well-known that the reasons for these pagan rites were religious. In contrast, the savage tradition of the village in Jackson’s story is unknown. It is done because it has continually been done year after year. Some of the parts of the rite have been lost and changed, but the final and most important act, the stoning, remains. Long-held traditions are hard to break thus the refusal to break from the past usually stems from a fear of change, since change of any form challenges the status quo of a society and threatens its stability. When Mr. Adams states about how, “over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery (Jackson)”, Old Man Warner, the most senior of the village citizens immediately label these progressive towns as a “pack of crazy fools (Jackson).” The village, therefore, is trapped in the name of stability. As in the case of the town of Omelas, the lottery is conducted and a citizen is killed in the name of social order. In Omela, the young boy’s suffering keeps the people feeling cheerful all the time. This, in turn, makes for a peaceful community without “monarchy and slavery…the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb (LeGuin).”
While the people of Omelas do not talk of the starving boy, however, they are allowed to look at him at a certain age and they have a choice whether to accept his role in the social structure or be bothered by the inflicted suffering. Most learn to move on and rationalize that “even if the child could not be released, it would not get much good of its freedom (LeGuin).” Those who cannot accept the essence of the young boy’s sacrifice walk away from Omelas. In contrast, the lottery does not give the citizens the same leeway of choice because they are indoctrinated to accept the rite since childhood. Before the drawing, it is the children who assemble first, their stones piled ready long beforehand. Furthermore, when the people begins to stone Mrs. Hutchinson, “some gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles (Jackson).” These images suggest that even at an age when they are innocent about what’s happening around them and why things are happening the way they do, the citizens of the village are taught to accept the lottery and its attendant stoning rite as facts of their village life.
The logic of the inhumanity of the lottery only comes when one becomes the victim as Mrs Hutchinson exclaims when they start stoning her: “It isn’t fair, isn’t right (Jackson).” But at the final point in the story, she becomes like the boy in the Omelas, unwilling of the role but thrust into it by the majority. This is the concept of sacrifice: a scapegoat is chosen to purge the one who performs the sacrifice from his undesirable qualities or prevent him from acquiring something undesirable. The young boy in the Omelas has to live in despair so the whole community does not have to feel this undesirable feeling. Mrs. Hutchinson has to be subjected to the cruelty of the lottery because it has long been a tradition of the society, and a society that keeps its tradition is one that would survive since it will remain the same as it has ever been.
Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”, Literature for Composition.
LeGuin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, Literature for Composition.
