The Devil And Miss Prym By Paulo Coehlo And The Short...

Sacrifice As children, many people become accustomed to utilizing the words â€Å"good† and â€Å"bad† in daily speech. Whether it is to describe how one is feeling or the nature of a decision made, the practice of binary labeling becomes a habit. In the novel The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coehlo and the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, the villagers must choose between what they perceive as good and what is not. The issue presented in both pieces of literature is whether the good of the many is worth the sacrifice of one individual, bringing to light the question of what really is â€Å"good†. The Devil and Miss Prym is a novel that takes place in the small, remote village of Viscos. A stranger enters into the town and presents the people with the opportunity to obtain riches through the gold he has buried there. The twist, however, is that they must commit murder in order to get the gold, therefore proving his theory that humankind is evil. When f aced with this proposal, the villagers determine that the sacrifice of one in order to benefit society is the right decision. Chantal Prym, the youngest of the villagers, is the messenger the stranger had originally chosen to share his proposition with the villagers. After struggling with determining what is good, she, herself, come to the conclusion that no one can be trusted and therefore the villager’s decision to murder Berta, the village’s wise old lady, is wrong. On the other hand, the villagers in The Lottery come to