The Lottery

Thursday, December 2, 2010 4:14 PM Posted by Emily Looney
This story is very deceiving because the title makes it seem like it is going to be something happy or prosperous for someone, but it is just the opposite. The Lottery is an annual event that includes stoning a person chosen at random for good luck in growing crops. There are many foreshadowing events that happen early on in the story though before it is actually announced what the lottery is. The people are acting nervously with their smiles rather than laughter at jokes (page 364) which only happens when someone's mind is not in the conversation or the present. It is required that everyone must attend this lottery, which would not be the case with a lottery as I think of it, winning money. When the women are speaking about the lottery they say how it seems as if it was only last week, implying that they do no look forward to what is going to happen. Then when the reader finds out that someone dies in this process, the primitive nature of the community is revealed.

I think there is some sort of conspiracy with Mr. Summers because he is the person who is instigating the practice in that he wants a new box, meaning he wants to continue on with the barbaric tradition. He seems to have ulterior motives because he does not stay completely with the tradition that it used to be, but he changes it ever so slightly. Since Mrs. Hutchinson is late to the ceremony, It seems like there is some way that Mr. Summers chooses who is going to die. He is very unsentimental toward Mrs. Hutchinson and her family when she has been chosen. I also think that it is odd when she arrives that the narrator says "...and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully, 'Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie." (page 266). That really gave me the feeling that Summers knew she was going to die or someone in her family was going to die because there was no way the practice could have gone on without her. This barbaric practice of the community really freaks me out and I hope this doesn't actually happen around the world...

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