+++This thread is for the people who have read "the lottery" please do not be in this thread otherwise+++
Remember this good 'ol story? I personally think it is stupid. It did keep me tense but I started to get PO'd because I didn't know what was going on. Of course, if I had known what was going on, I probably wouldn't have read it in the first place, but I found it stupid anyways. It's like they do it for the sheer reason of tradition, despite the fact that they are being hypocritical and. . . .morbid! Having a lottery picking out a random person in a village of 500 or so people to kill is just disturbing. They are being extremely hypocritical because, during the story, a character says that the people who excluded the "lottery" were uncivilized and barbaric, but it didn't occur to them that randomly killing another person actually was barbaric (you catch that?). Even worse, their not doing it for entertainment. Even WORSE, they die in one of the most painful and brutal ways I've ever heard about. Being beaten to death by stones must be extremely painful and slow. My point is, I think that this story is sick, and not in the good way. What are your thoughts of the story?
+++Again, you should have read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson to fully understand what I am saying.+++
This is a short story written by Shirly Jackson, I read it in high school and then again in college. Stories like this are written for a reason. There are several themes here:
Theme 1 The reluctance of people to reject outdated traditions, ideas, rules, laws, and practices.
Theme 2 Society wrongfully designates scapegoats to bear the sins of the community.
Theme 3 The wickedness of the common man or woman on the street can be just as shocking and horrifying as the heinous crime of a serial killer or a sadistic head of state.
Theme 4 The unexamined life is not worth living. Theme 5 Following the crowd can have disastrous consequences.
Do not dismiss fiction as something without purpose.
Storytelling is at the heart of the human psyche. Fiction is "...A mirror held up to humanity." It allows us to look at things we might not normally look at and think about them differently than we might otherwise.
Even our dreams teach us things about ourselves if we learn how to interpret them.
