Unit 5. Post 1

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

"'I tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that'"(Jackson, 270).

I particularly enjoyed this story because it reminded me of an episode of South Park. I am not going to go into details but I will say I got a good chuckle out of this. All of that is relative and unimportant however. This story is centered around a dead tradition that has no real meaning to the townspeople anymore. The tradition I speak of is the so called "lottery". The lottery is said to bring a high yield for the harvest. Sounds good, right? WRONG! The intent might be in the interest of benefiting the town, however the means by which the good is achieved is archaic, barbaric, and plain inhuman. The lottery is to choose what lucky citizen is stoned to death as a sacrifice to the harvest.

The way the lottery is talked about and presented as this somber occasion, despite having a title that indicates that someone has a chance of winning some fantastic prize, which is the reader's first clue that something is not all well with this lottery deal. There are subtle hints throughout the first half of the story that indicate that nobody is particularly enthused to participate, which, by the way, they are forced to do. The way the townspeople act around each other and the lottery box seems uneasy and apprehensive, another clue to show how dark this occasion really is. Pretty much the entire beginning half of the story foreshadows the twisted reality of the lottery.

I like this story because it makes me enjoy how society today has come to its senses on some of the more important things like human sacrifices. I like the Mayans, don't get me wrong, but I would not want to be living there because my heart belongs inside my chest cavity. If only humanity could realize how awful Jersey Shore is.