I always connect "The Lottery" with Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." These stories are both based on the idea that if we sacrifice one person, everyone else can have a good life. In Le Guin's story, no one is stoned to death, but the poor creature that is captive might as well have been stoned to death, since this child leads such a miserable life. In both stories, there is no one arguing that this "tradition" must cease. In "The Lottery" the only opposition that surfaces is from the victim, understandably, and in "Omelas," those who find this tradition distasteful do not speak out against it. They merely walk away, so they can avoid the moral dilemma. Also, both stories have settings that could be anywhere, deliberately vague, so the reader understands that these horrors could happen any time and any place.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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