Dangers of Unimportance

The ending of the short story The Lottery, relates to the events that happen in the movie Equilibrium. In The Lottery, the village of 300 people draw from a mysterious box that ulitmatly decide wether they live or die. Towards the end of the story a character named Tessie, who was ironicaly late to the draw, name was chosen from the black box. She was chased by the villagers and stoned to death. This story relates to the movie Equilibrium because in the movie the citizens are expected to report one another if they don't take their "feeling suppressor" control drug called Prozium. If caught not taking the drug, they are put to death by incineration. Both of these peices show how a society that are close to one another (in terms of knowing or aware of who people are in your community) will have no problem stoning their fellow person, or in the case of the movie, reporting them which ultimatly leads to the death of their fellow citizens, even if it is their family members.

Eli Wiesel's speech Directly relates to the story The Lottery. In Eli Wiesel's speech he says "In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders". He is talking about how although America was valliant and couragous for liberating him and his fellow people from Auchwitz, they knew what was happening with the jews in Germany long before they made an attempt to do anything about it, and how the St Louis ship full of 1000 jews landed on American soil, but were later rejected back to Nazi Germany and put to death. Eli Wiesel's quote relates to The Lottery and how the villagers are basically either killers, victims, or bystanders. All of the villagers, before the drawing of the names, are normal people that are living their life. But as soon as a name is drawn, that person becomes a victim, while all others become killers and bystanders.