In most societies today, we treat life as the most precious thing to hold on to. We all participate in numerous ways to entertain ourselves in ways that also distract us from our normal lives; and a big part of our life is having fun. However, the themes of “The Lottery” and “The Most Dangerous Game” take the concept of gaming to a whole new level. A theme that “The Lottery” and “The Most Dangerous Game” have in common is the desensitized vision of the value of human life. In this way the authors attempt to highlight how desensitized we really are to this type of behavior. Although both stories show a desensitization to murder, the antagonists have different motivations. In “The Lottery,” the story doesn't directly say why they would start killing one random person a year. However, in Patrick Shields' article “Arbitrary Sentencing and Sanctioned Violence in the Shirley Jackson 'Lottery'” there are a couple of ways to look at the story. Shields suggests that one way of looking at it is that the author has not directly specified any reason to the reader. It also suggests that Shirley Jackson's possible intention could have been to allow the reader to evaluate the story and find the motif and their own background that they can relate to. Another way of looking at the story, according to Shields' article, is that the drawing is a ritual cleansing and the community believes it is in their best interest to perform it. Evidence to support this could be the mayor's attitude in allowing this type of murder as acceptable and nothing out of the ordinary. When someone kills someone outside of the design, it would be considered murder and punished according to social rules. If the murder occurred only following the plan, then it is a ritual and therefore less brutal. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In "The Most Dangerous Game", the reason that the story gives the reader would be revealed by General Zaroff towards the middle of the story. Zaroff explains to Rainsford his passion for hunting and that he has hunted his entire life. His reasoning was that he had been hunting a wide variety of dangerous animals such as cheetah and buffalo for so long, that he began to realize that he was getting bored of hunting normal animals. So Zaroff decided to “invent a new animal” (Connell). His plan was to hold the stranded people who crashed there captive and later put them in the desert of his island to hunt them down. There are also a couple of possible reasons according to Terry Thompson's article "A Tale of Two Centuries: Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game'" which explains Zaroff's motivations. The reason Terry Thompson stated was that it may have the underlying representation of Darwinism's theory of “change, adaptation, natural selection and extinction” (Thompson). There is actually a quote from Zaroff himself in the story where he states that "Life is for the strong" (Connell). This is a very similar point of view to that of Darwin with his dictum “Survival of the fittest”. In "The Most Dangerous Game", Zaroff sees humans as a new animal that he can hunt and that has reasoning unlike any other animal. This is also a result of his motivation to increase his enjoyment of hunting. He says that the animal he wants to hunt must have the ability to reason and not just animalistic instincts. This is mostly because he hunted when he was a child and has hunted so much his entire life. As mentioned before, it also follows a similar saying to “Survival of the most,.