The human nature Essay Example for Free

The human nature Essay How much is human frustration worth? Is it worth losing a chance to buy a present for the girl you like? Or is it worth participating in a lottery which is nothing more but a silly tragic fatal ritual? I was asking these questions while reading James Joyces Araby and Shirley Jacksons The Lottery. For me, both stories represent the ultimate point of human despair: at this point, the person is no longer able to control his (her) life and surrenders under the pressure of overwhelming circumstances. I think that frustration is the central element of both stories; it touches the depth of the readers soul and turns into disruptive revelation about the perversity and hideousness of the human nature. Human strength and endurance has no limits; human evil and self-interest are unlimited, too. James Joyces Araby shows human frustration in its powerlessness in the face of insuperable circumstances. Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. [†¦] When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped (Joyce 62). The whole life of the anonymous narrator is filled with joy of seeing the young lady walking in front of him, and passing her before their ways diverge. He lives his life from morning to morning, when he will see Magans sister again. This is the life full of waiting; this is the life full of expectation, anxiety, dreaming and almost physical attraction. The same is the life of villagers whom Jackson describes in her The Lottery. It is the life full of expectation mixed with the feeling of threat, fear, and imminence of the coming end: Bobby Martin already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones (Jackson 10). As the young boy cannot wait to visit the bazaar I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me childs play (Joyce 63), the villagers cannot wait to hear when the new victim of the annual ritual will be declared: guess we better get started, get this over with, sos we can go back to work (Jackson 13). The deeper Joyce goes into the young boys soul, the larger is the prairie between his promise to visit the Araby bazaar and the realization of his inability to fulfill the promise: Nearly all stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness (Joyce 65). How bright and shockingly sincere Joyces revelation could be, Jacksons story has gone far beyond Joyces reasonable limits. Jackson has gone even deeper to the moment of unexpectedness which emphasized the unlimited nature of human mercenary character. In the light of Jacksons The Lottery, Araby produces an impression of the boy’s relatively mild reconciliation with the surrounding opportunities and circumstances. Moreover, I feel that Joyce still leaves some hope that everything will change: ultimately, there will be another bazaar and another girl, although the young boy does not yet understand it. On the contrary, Jackson uses unexpectedness to emphasize how far human coldness, rationality, and perversity can go; the author shows, how easily humans turn into beasts when they pursue material interests, leaving no hope to escape the lottery’s trap. Jackson shows how human desire to kill turns into a usual feeling, when it becomes regular for and acceptable by other community members: the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten oclock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner (Jackson 10). Conclusion Both stories end up in frustration; for Joyces character, frustration is reflected in the hollow sound of two pennies that fall against the sixpence in my pocket (Joyce 66). A creature driven and derided by vanity (Joyce 66) is the end result of Joyces striving towards recognition and love. For Tessie Hutchinson, frustration becomes real as she holds the slip of paper that has a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office (Jackson 17). Later, this frustration turns into the feeling of inevitability of tragedy, when a stone hit her on the side of the head (Jackson 17). In both stories, frustration is the shocking reflection of the human hideousness, cruelty, and indifference which leave no chance for spiritual and physical resurrection. Works Cited Jackson, S. â€Å"The Lottery†. 10-17. Joyce, J. â€Å"Araby.† 61-6.