Introduction
Violence is the primitive harsh desire that exists in all kinds of creatures. Violence is everywhere. It lives in human genes in various forms: crime, war, blind obedience. Even if humans define themselves as intelligent species, this is human nature and cannot change. In various perspectives, “ The Lottery,” “ We Real Cool,” and “ Daddy” all expound how violence affects the lives of humans.
The Lottery
“ The Lottery” went straight to the point in the form of collective participation in a so-called democracy, the social activities where everyone has equal opportunities conventional methods of democracy can still be collective atrocities that destroy individuals, and even kill people. It analyzed the human nature, irony of groups, and condemnation of the Holocaust; and of course violence covered by democracy and religion. The story has a dystopian background. At the beginning of the story, the tone is suspenseful, and the whole process of the lottery started in a peaceful time and a beautiful town which is a massive difference compared to the villagers’ tradition of violence. The details are quite significant. For example, at the end of the story, the author mentioned that ” Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remember to use the stone” (Shirley Jackson, 425). The quotes showed that even though the activity had already lost its original meaning, the people who live in the village still let the violence keep going which means that the violence was rooted down in their souls, the killing will never stop.
We Real Cool
Likewise, “ We Real Cool” elaborates on distinct violence. This poem is from seven pool players; it is about young people who lived a fleeting life like fireworks. At first, they were pleased with the fascinating lifestyle they outlined in the whole poem, but this brutal violence mood suddenly ended in the last line, when their death appeared to be the consequence of their actions. In the middle of the poem, another meaning of the word ‘ strike’ is violence. Whether they are going to commit crimes now or in the future, it makes the seven pool players more dangerous. The next line is ‘ We sing sin ‘(Gwendolyn Brooks, 730). Singing sin essentially means that these guys are celebrating that they sinned. They had no moral obligations and thought committing crimes were fun. It shows that they do what they want to do, the seven pool players may not be appropriately guided to correct their negative ideas, and it caused them to think that violence is exciting.
Daddy
Eventually, the poem “ Daddy” is the most complicated of the three literary works. It is a cruel and incomprehensible poem containing violent images. The author Sylvia Plath used the sharp tone of her voice to contain the complex emotion that she held to her father and the violence she received. For example, the third part of the poem the author used “ I used to pray to recover you” (772). In addition to indicating that she prayed that her father could return safely, it also implies that she hopes her husband will stop being unfaithful to her. Plath has Electra Complex because her husband and father have a similar personality, she transferred the feelings for her father to her husband. Also, the fourteenth part of the poem ‘ The black telephone is off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.’ It showed that Plath’s husband tied her with a telephone line and choked her neck. Plath treated herself as a victim like a Jew in the Auschwitz concentration camp by using the nightmare scene of the Holocaust as a metaphor for the relationship between the daughter, and the German father, which did indeed reveal the depth and significance of history. In the course of this poem, the author’s goal was to recover, to reunite with her dead father, trying to kill the memory of her father and end his violence over her.
Conclusion
All three of the literary works provided the same message of violence rooted in human nature, but they have differences. “ The Lottery” and “ We real cool” provide pure violence: commit the crime. Conversely, “ Daddy” is more relying on the emotional level, and seeing the author’s real-life through character’s words. Furthermore, characters in “ The Lottery” and “ We Real Cool” contained similar collective socially disoriented activities. They are using group violence in different ways. The central idea of “ Daddy” was more inclined about confession and the sensation of violence, it expressed the fear and pain of the author and the contradictory feelings for her father, physical abuse was just one of the elements in the poem. These three stories all used different ways to provide the theme; conversely, every literature elaborates the audience that violence will never disappear. It is rooted in the ancient primitive period and keeps happening in modern times. The victim of abuse cannot forget the experience of fear, which is what is in the three articles.
