English Literature

The Struggle Within

I believe every human being has had at some point in their lives experienced a struggle within oneself . This is what William Faulkner identified as "the human heart in conflict with itself ' Just like the characters involved in some the stories we read in books . And it makes us , readers , relate to each character 's feelings and struggles as we read along . I will be discussing two stories as an example to further explain how we become witnesses to a character 's struggle with himself The Lottery ' written by

Shirley Jackson , and : A Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe . Both stories reveal that there are certain occurrences in our lives when we come across a conflict and struggle within our own selves "The Lottery " is a story about an annual ritual held in a small American town every 27th of June . The village people would gather together in the town square , wherein a sacrificial victim would be chosen through a public lottery . There would be two draws . First among all families , then the family who gets to pick the marked , gets to draw again , this time among all family members . Whoever picks the with a dot becomes the chosen one , the winner ' Ironically the winner ' gets stoned to death as a prize . In this story , the character in which I would present having the struggle with herself is Mrs . Tessie Hutchinson . She is a wife to Bill Hutchinson and a mother to three kids Nancy , Dave and Bill Jr

In the first part of the story when the villagers gathered for the ritual , Mrs . Hutchinson never showed any signs of opposition to the ritual the way some villagers did . As if everything was normal . As if that day is a celebration . She never seemed to mind being part of the gruesome ritual . Even though stoning someone to death , meant killing an innocent , for the simplest reason that that person was unfortunate to have drawn the wining pick

But when time came for the draw , Tessie 's revealed the dot . She suddenly started resenting the lottery . She then started screaming ' it isn 't fair

This struggle reveals that she is a character of hypocrisy . She never resented the past rituals when she herself was part of it . Because she contributed in the killing , by throwing stones herself . The conflict arose when she suddenly learned she 's going to be the one to be stoned to die next . She started claiming it isn 't fair for her to die . She became a victim of her own self when she started resenting the ritual which she never did in the past rituals , only because she knows it was her turn to die

Like the first story I discussed , The Lottery , Edgar Allan Poe 's The Tell-Tale Heart ' reveals another character that had a struggle with self

Tell-Tale Heart is a story of murder . A well plotted murder . The narrator is the prime character in the story...