myles' blog

The Lottey

The Lottery
By Shirley Jackson

My short story the lottery takes place in a village that consists of about three hundred people. Even though it gives you no date besides it’s the morning of June 27th. The story obviously takes place in the past because the village is independent the crops they grow are the food they eat. On this Particular evening everyone in the town is gathering at the center. For a lottery of some sort, Waiting for the lottery to happen everyone is making there own little piles of rocks. It doesn’t really fill you in with all the details but gives little hints that something odd is happening.

Mr.Summers the owner of the coal mine comes to the center and asks if everyone is there and ready. Then he sets a black box with little pieces of white paper on a stool in front of everyone. They are told one by one to come grab a piece of paper and go back to your spot but not to look at it yet. Then when told to look at the paper quite whispers went through the crowd, "where is it", and "whose got it". Then all the papers where blank except one the one with the black spot made by Mr.Summers the night before with a piece of coal. It was Tessie Hutchinson who had it and when the crowd saw this suddenly they were upon hurling rocks at her head as she screamed for them to stop.

I personally liked the story a lot. Just because I knew something weird was happening but I didn’t see that ending coming at all. It really kept me guessing. I definitely don’t agree with the theme of the story though. Which is that human sacrifice is necessary for plentiful crops. The subject of the story, being lottery’s or old traditions. You can tell this story takes place a long time ago because humans still believed in such crazy superstitions as this one. I also think the author was trying to reveal just how much human beliefs and superstitions have changed over the years.

One of my favorite movies is a documentary call Darius Goes West.
The subject of this movie is taking a 15 year old west across America because he has never left Athens. The theme of this movie is to raise awareness for DMD. Which is a serious disease that affects many of today’s youth. It is a disease where you would be lucky to make it the age of 20. Logan Smalley the person, who put this movie together, did an extreme job on delivering the theme to the viewer. He did this by talking with professors on the topic and taping there whole trip across the U.S. showed just how hard it s for the handicapped to get around, then also by talking with other kids and their parents who had the same disease.

posted by myles @ 8:36 AM