“The Lottery” started of with a happy and calm beginning, though it was obvious that the people in the story were tense. I thought that was because everyone was excited to win the lottery, but that turned out to be false. I was confused when Bill’s wife insisted that it was a mistake that Bill had gotten the marked paper. It confused me because she didn’t want to win the lottery, which is weird because people usually want to win the lottery. Some children said that other villages started giving up the tradition of lottery, which I found was interesting. Because why would anyone want to give up such a nice tradition? At the end I understood why, because the lottery’s “prize” is in fact a punishment. The people throw all the rocks they gathered at the person who was unlucky enough to win, and they probably kill her. Then I wondered, why would anyone want to do this? Why wouldn’t they stop the tradition like the other villages?
The person who conducts the lottery said: “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while.” when some people told him that other villages were talking about giving up lottery. I find it ironic that he tells people that they want to go back to living in caves and being uncivilised when his village is killing people with rocks! He doesn’t understand that leaving lottery is the right thing to do, because he is obsessed with his village’s traditions.
I think this is a good story though, with a nice plot twist. I think it shows how stupid people can be, because they’re not standing up for themselves.
Second Response To “The Lottery”
Through a whole week of discussing the Lottery, I had to chance to understand more about this story. At first the character of Tessie and how she was late to the lottery didn’t capture my attention. Later on I decided how she has a weird personality because she didn’t care about the lottery -she was even late- until she was the one to be killed. I also understood that the lottery is a symbol of war. They’re similar in many ways. Innocent people get killed in wars even if they did nothing wrong, they kill an innocent person in the lottery every year. Everyone has the same chance of survival in a war, nobody stops to save young children. Everybody in the lottery have the same chance of getting stoned to death, even children and babies just like in war. I think Shirley Jackson was very smart to not describe the war in a normal way, because I think it creates more effect on the reader.