An Excerpt from Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

Consider the following:

What choices does the director make to highlight the tension and emotional climate of this short story?

Why does this community hold the lottery?
Does this story present a conflict? If so, explain.
With the exception of Tessa, why are there no dissenters?
What rituals or sacrifices exist in our world today? Are there some that have outworn their purpose or reason?

Comments

Vlad said…
Old man Warner's Quote "It ain't the way it used to be" really caught my attention, I'm not sure what the meaning of it is... How was the lottery done different in the past?
July 7, 2009 at 8:32 PM
Aaron said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
July 7, 2009 at 11:18 PM
wayne said…
1. People harry to pick up heavy and huge stones and stoned Tessie. Even her son was given a stone to stone his mom.

2. I think the lottery they hold is the way of worshipping or praying to their imaginative god, thereby receive their pursuits and wishes.

3. The story present 2 kinds of conflicts. 1)Superficially, person vs. person. The whole village stands against Tessie. 2)Essentially, person vs. society. The real murder of Tessie is not the villagers, since they don't hold hatred toward her personally. The real murder is the trandition, which should be gradually deserted as human beings becomes increasingly knowledgeable and wise.

4. If I were one of them, I won't do anything either. At least I am not the one who has to sacrifice. If I stand out, support Tessie and a re-drawing is conducted, there is a possibility that I would be the one to be stoned. Therefore, why would I? (Considering that to desert the lottery at this point of time is impossible, since only very few people in the village showed little intention to stop this annual event).

5. This is where the key prolbem comes in: people who living in the society are usually unaware of the problems they are conducting all the time. For example, if everyone know that the lottery is wrong and should be stopped, the lottery won't happen. Just because most of them cannot realize the problem and treat the lottery as a annual routine, the tragedy of Tessie occured. It's really difficult for people who is living in a specific point of time to point out what mistakes they are making. Conversely, it's quite easy for your decendants to summerize if you did right or wrong on specific things. The developing of mentality and knowledge takes time.
October 18, 2010 at 4:48 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dead Crows and Other Mysteries

Image
(Image: Oil Painting by Kirsti Ann Wakelin) The other evening I dreamt I found a dead crow caught behind the cushions of my sofa. Disturbing. How did it get there, in my dream, so concrete and visible? And what does it mean? Carl Jung would have me analyze the significance of this dream as it connects to our collective consciousness. What do crows symbolize in our culture today? Was this a visit from Poe? Has a Haida raven dropped by to keep me on my toes? Or is the recent death of my grandfather somehow "couched" in my internal dialogue? He was a storyteller. Even more intriguing is what happened when I relayed this dream story to my grade 8's. Picking up a new book of poetry and opening it randomly the first poem I fell upon was Jon Silkin's "Carved", the first two lines: Two small dogs stood by a dead black bird And the black bird was very dead. There is no denying death. The dead are dead. As with Silkin's black bird. As with
Read more

Are You Normal?

Pre writing assignment for Ken Kesey 's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Normal : - adj . 1. conforming to a standard; regular, usual, typical. 2. to flee from mental or emotional disorder. 3. Geom . (of a line) at right angles, temperature etc. [Latin normalis: related to norm] - Oxford Dictionary What is normal? Should everyone be normal? Who gets to decide what is normal and what is not? Why? Is there a purpose to opposing the construct of normal? You are invited to post comments that reflect on the idea of normal.
Read more

Rules & Laws: What is their role?

Martin Luther King once said: "Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws". [Presumably he meant women too! ;)] It seems true that rules and laws play a pivotal role in maintaining some sense of social order. What if there were no laws? Would chaos unfold? Would the world as we know it fall apart? Or would life take on some new kind of structure, maybe something we haven't imagined yet? What is the role of rules and laws in our society? Is there ever a time when some rules or laws should be broken? Why?
Read more