This 1983 story by Frederik Pohl was clearly influenced by Shirley Jackson’s famous story “The Lottery,” which had been published 35 years earlier. Probably some good high-school English papers were written in the ’80s comparing and contrasting the two stories.
So, I’ll pretend that I’m a typical 2025 high school student who has been given such an assignment. What would such a typical student do? Submit the assignment to ChatGPT 5, of course. Here is the resulting essay; could you detect that it was written by an AI and not by me?
Essay: Comparing Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Frederik Pohl’s “Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair”
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) and Frederik Pohl’s “Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair” (1964) both use the idea of a lottery as their central motif, but the two stories take it in very different directions. Jackson frames the lottery as a horrifying ritual of violence hidden within ordinary life, while Pohl satirizes a futuristic consumer spectacle designed to distract and control the public. By comparing these two stories, we can see how the lottery becomes a powerful metaphor for social critique, whether focused on tradition or on consumer culture.
Jackson’s story is set in a small rural village on a bright summer morning. The calm, familiar setting lulls readers into a sense of normalcy before the shocking reveal: the lottery is a ritual sacrifice in which one villager is stoned to death. The power of the story lies in its irony—what seems like a harmless community gathering turns out to be an act of collective violence. For Jackson, the lottery exposes the dangers of blind conformity, the persistence of meaningless traditions, and the cruelty that ordinary people are capable of when they follow the crowd.
By contrast, Pohl’s “Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair” transports readers into a garish, carnival-like environment in a futuristic world. The lottery here is not about sacrifice but about entertainment and the promise of riches. Visitors are dazzled by games, prizes, and the spectacle of chance, but the fair functions as a tool of social control. In an overpopulated and resource-strained future, the lottery keeps citizens pacified by distracting them with hope, just as modern consumer culture often keeps people focused on entertainment rather than injustice. Pohl’s tone is satirical and humorous, but beneath the humor lies a sharp critique of manipulation and exploitation.
Despite their differences in tone and setting, both stories reveal how societies use rituals or spectacles to maintain order and control. Jackson’s villagers accept violence without question because it is traditional, while Pohl’s citizens accept inequality because they are distracted by entertainment and the dream of sudden wealth. Both stories suggest that people often participate in harmful systems—whether through conformity or distraction—without questioning their moral cost.
In the end, Jackson and Pohl arrive at different kinds of unease. Jackson shocks her readers with horror, showing that barbarism can hide under the surface of ordinary life. Pohl leaves readers amused but unsettled, recognizing echoes of his exaggerated fair in real-world consumer spectacles like state lotteries, casinos, and game shows. Taken together, the two stories show how the symbol of the lottery can illuminate both the dangers of tradition and the perils of distraction, making it a versatile and enduring metaphor for social critique.
Not bad for an AI version, except for one problem. ChatGPT also offered (no extra charge!) to condense this into a tighter three-paragraph version — as is often required by English teachers — but I turned it down. The aforementioned problem is that the essay is completely off-base in its analysis of the Pohl story! The form is fine, but the content is rubbish. Read the story yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.
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