In most societies today, we view life as the most precious thing to hold on to. We all participate in many ways to entertain ourselves while distracting us from our regular lives; and a large part of our life is about having fun. However, the themes of “The Lottery” and “The Most Dangerous Game” take the concept of gambling to a whole new level. One theme that “The Lottery” and “The Most Dangerous Game” have in common is the desensitized view of the value of human life. The authors thus attempt to highlight the extent to which we really are desensitized to this type of behavior. Although both stories show 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 per year. However, in Patrick Shields' article "Arbitrary Conviction and Sanctioned Violence in Shirley Jackson's 'Lottery'" there are several ways to look at the story. Shields suggests that one way of looking at it is that the author has not directly specified any motive to the reader. It also suggests that Shirley Jackson's possible intention might have been to allow the reader to evaluate the story and find the reason and their own context that they can tell. Another way to look at the story, according to Shields' article, is that the drawing is a cleansing ritual and the community feels it is in their best interest to perform it. Evidence to support this claim would be the attitude of the mayor who even allows this type of murder as acceptable and nothing out of the ordinary. When someone kills someone outside of the drawing, it will be considered murder and punished according to society's rules. If the murder occurred solely as a result of the drawing, then it is a ritual and therefore less heinous. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay In "The Most Dangerous Game", the motive that the story gives the reader would be revealed by General Zaroff around the middle of the story. Zaroff explains to Rainsford his passion for hunting and that he has hunted his whole life. His reasoning was that he had been hunting for so long and a wide variety of dangerous animals like cheetahs and buffalo, that he began to realize that he was tired of hunting normal animals. So, Zaroff decided to “invent a new animal” (Connell). His plan was to hold the stranded people who had crashed there captive and later send them into the wilderness of his island to hunt them down. There are also a few possible reasons according to Terry Thompson's article "A Tale of Two Centuries: Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game'" explaining Zaroff's motive. The reason Terry Thompson stated was that it might 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 view very similar to that of Darwin with his dictum about “survival of the fittest”. In "The Most Dangerous Game", Zaroff views humans as a new animal that he can hunt and that has reasoning unlike any other animal. It is also the result of his motivations aimed at increasing his pleasure in hunting. He says that the animal he wants to hunt must have the ability to reason rather than just animal instincts. This is mainly because he hunted when he was a young child and he,.