A Worn Path / The Lottery.
Both "A Worn Path," by Eudora Welty, and "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, deal with .
routine and the impact following a routine can have on people. In "A Worn Path", Old Phoenix .
shows how as you get older, your capability of doing things become limited which leads you to .
doing things over and over again following a set of routine. In "The Lottery", the event that .
takes place every June 27th has been normalized by the villagers. .
In " A Worn Path," as Old Phoenix walked through the woods and got to the top of .
the hill and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come and said "Up through pines," then "Now down through oaks," she knew what path's going to be ahead of her and where she was at a certain point just by looking what was behind her. And when she said "Now comes the trial," referring to a log that's laid across the creek at the foot of the hill and "Through the maze now," as she passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn, it ndicated that she's gone through this path a lot of times, that she knew where and how things were placed in the woods as she has walked through it in a daily basis. She knew what to expect ahead and how it was like once she passed through it.
In the "The Lottery," as the day of the event came, the villagers made it seem like .
everything was normal. The men gathered up within the area and called up the attention of their .
children. As with the women, they all stopped what they were usually doing and gathered outside following their husbands and started to exchange gossips. The villagers didn't bother about the tradition that was originally done such as the ritual salute, a tuneless chant and recital for the lottery. These rituals have faded away from one generation to another as people normalized everything through doing things in their everyday experience.
