English 102
September 3, 2014
Weekly Assignment: Introduction &Procedures Theme
Pg. 908-909
1. The story gave me the perception that the story occurred in a small town out North where most men worked as farmers that grew corn, maybe in the early 1920. I think the author wanted the reader to feel comfortable and believe this lottery was a good thing for the community. For the present day reared, the lottery is seen as a lucky chance at winning great wealth. So, the author may have used that perception to gain the readers confidence that something good was to come.
2. I never paid any attention to the young boys collecting the rocks who were laughing and joking and that some had even stuffed their pockets with rocks. I just took it as young boys playing as usual, but then the young boys began to gather the rocks into a pile and their laughter became no more. I dismissed the collection of the rocks and began to focus on the women gossiping hoping to gain some insight as to what the prize would be of the chosen winner.
3. The shabby splintered black box represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogic of the villagers’ loyalty to it. The black box is falling apart, hardly even black anymore after years of use and storage, but no one is willing to replace or repair it. The slips of paper represented someone who picked the correct slip would be the winner, so I thought, however in this case the slip with the black dot represented death by stoning.
4. People in small towns often will stick to traditions even though they may want to discontinue them, but often people feel powerless even though no one has forced them to do something that they don’t want to do. You had old man Warner who kept insisting that the lottery was a good thing and that the town need to continue with its tradition, while others believed that just like other small towns in that area who had discontinued the tradition of the lottery and nothing bad happen to their crops. They too could stop holding the lottery. A person is willing to kill another person for no logical reason, just because your told it is tradition is unreal; and for the villagers to return home and continue their day as if nothing happened after a stoning of one of the town’s people is cold and heartless. People should learn to stand up for what they believe in and have a voice and let it be known that life is precisions to all.
5. This means that when the lottery came around in June, it would not be long before their crops of corn would start growing. It can also be read that if the lottery did not take place in June, then maybe the corn or crop would not come up that year because they did not stick to tradition.
6. It was said that this story was actually written by the author due to the bad experience that the author had while living in North Bennington, Vermont .It is believed that Ms. Jackson was stoned by the children where she lived because of how eccentric she was and she did not fit in to the way other people lived in her community. People in her community believed that she practiced witchcraft, which caused them to throw rocks at her.
7. Yes in today’s society youth are being sentenced as adults for crimes as if they were adults, and may are first time offenders. Just recently a sheriff named Joe Arpaio of a small town in Arizona had his deputy’s pull over any one that was of Hispanic or African American decent and check for proper ID mostly to determine that person’s citizenship. If the person was not an American citizen they were to arrest them and have them deported. Even though many of the deputies knew that this was wrong they never questioned or stood against