Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Inhumane Traditions

The short story, The Lottery, and the Indian tradition of degrading widows share similar content: inhumane acts need to stop because of the countless lives that are getting damaged.  Old traditions that can be harmful should not be still going on just because it’s been going on for decades/centuries.  The following points show why the inhumane traditions of death and segregation need to stop in the contents.  The two contents show humans being ridiculed, for example in The lottery, the family of the condemned individual are ridiculed by others, they are put to shame by stoning a loved one to death, despite being too young to talk or too old to stand.  In India female widows are ridiculed by being separated from society as if they are undesired. The contents show that traditions bring out the worst in people, in The Lottery, friends and family turn cold towards the victim, not even bothering to help or rebel. The families of widows are the ones that send the widow to the house where she is to stay for the rest of her life; the family does not bother to save the widow because they do not want to stray from tradition.  Humanity has learned in the past centuries, we have shaped our future but we still carry out inhumane acts, it is not fair for a widow, who is not responsible for her husband’s death, to be hidden from society and to be shunned, humanity has not learned that stoning someone is a horrible way to die either.  Traditions have been going on for centuries and there’s nothing wrong with that but humans are intellectual enough to realize that inhumanity is not a tradition.

This picture is of indian widows, they are old and underfed. Society looks down upon them because they are widows.

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