Short Stories Theme Of Discrimination example essay topic

How Discrimination is a Major Theme in the Short Stories. The trait of discrimination is the basis for the stories, Harrison Bergeron, after you my dear Alphonse, and Lottery. Discrimination is when someone is hated or acted upon negatively for the reason of race, sex, or nationality. In the short stories the author's feelings of discrimination are expressed through the characters differently.

In these stories the author has his own feelings and thought depicted through the characters. By the popular theme of discrimination and racism it suggests that these stories were written in the late sixties early seventies. In the story Harrison Bergeron the whole country is handicapped except for one individual. The one person is Hazel who is thought to be perfect and the rest of the country is molded after her. Hazel and lives a normal life to you and me but the rest of the country is handicapped to be like her, for example if a girl was more attractive than Hazel she would wear a mask. This shows discrimination against everyone because they are taking that person's freedom away and judging them on their looks and abilities.

A man named Harrison who would be a sport super star in real life because of his outstanding talent is fitted with weights and other handicaps to make him like everyone else. He revolts and overcomes his handicaps but is soon killed for breaking the law. In this story discrimination plays a big part in how the main character revolts. The next example is in the story, after you my dear alphonse.

In this story a boy becomes friends with an African American boy named Boyd and brings him home for lunch, when he gets home his mother is shocked to see her son with this boy. The mother assumes that the father works hard labor in the fields and that the boy will grow up and do the same. But that's not the case, the boys father works in a factory. This is an example of discrimination because the mother assumes things just because he is black. The last example of discrimination as a theme for a short story is in The Lottery. In this story a community has a lottery every year and the winner is stoned to death.

The theme of discrimination is shown when they just pick a random person and kill them. That discriminates against that person because they show hate for little or no reason. In these stories the theme of discrimination is greatly shown through the characters and the plot. The time frame in which the authors wrote these stories also had a strong influence on the story line. All of the examples of discrimination were different in the stories, in Harrison Bergeron it was a wide spread act, in after you my dear alphonse it was directed towards blacks, and in The Lottery it was a random act. No matter what type of discrimination it was it was serious and attracted the attention of the reader.