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Sarah Torres
Professor Pogach
151L-26
January 21, 2015
Response paper for “The Lottery” The short story “The Lottery” was a very suspenseful story. Throughout the whole story there was a lot of dialogue between Mr. Summers and Tessie. In the beginning of the story they make it seem so happy as if this is something that people get excited (Jackson describes the villagers getting up early and crowding around early) but as I read I get a feel that no one in the town likes the lottery. These are the kind of stories I really dislike reading. Before I read this story I thought that this was going to be a story relating to the topic of the lottery where someone wins a lot of money, but then during the story I see that the title is nothing like the title. It’s almost the opposite, as if no instead of people dying to get picked, people in this town never want to get picked. The title always tells you what the story will be about but with this title it gave the opposite, because instead of someone winning a lot of money, someone is stoned to death at the end by the villagers. This story was probably written a long time ago when life was different. At first at the end of the story I wasn’t sure of what exactly happened. I’ve never heard of the term stoning someone to death. I looked it up and found out that it’s when people take stones and throw them at a person that has maybe done something wrong and must be punished for their action. By knowing that the whole story then all clicked together like puzzle pieces. I know understood why the villagers were nervous/excited in the beginning to how when the family was standing up in front of everyone in the village, one by one, flip their car over revealing if they have a black spot on their car. The other thing that confuses me as a reader is, who decides who has a black spot (do Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves just randomly pick a name and mark them with the coal from the coal company they prepare the card at?) there weren’t any big/important symbols in this story. I like stories with strong symbols because they make you think about how they all