Response To The Lottery

Words: 430
Pages: 2

In the 21st century, the lottery is a cheap and rare way to earn large amounts of money, just by luck. Although I’m not allowed to play in the lottery yet, my parents and grandparents always participated in the lottery, like it was their favorite pastime. I understood from a young age that the lottery wasn’t about skill, it was about luck, and sometimes, there’s not enough luck to go around. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is about the true luck of winning the lottery, held in a small town full of normal people in 1948. While reading the lottery, you get this sense of how traditional and happy this practice is for some of the townspeople, but things aren’t always what they seem.
Towards the beginning, you believe this is a normal lottery, seeing how the villagers gather in the town square with children who are playing, men that are talking, and woman that are gossiping. In the line, the lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by Mr. Summers, Who had time and energy to devote to civic
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The gathering of stones, the ritualistic ways of the people, and the lack of laughter from the men, instead replaced with small smiles. The nervousness of the town had been evident, but the author makes it easy to interpret the actions as excitement, rather than anything else. The rising action is occurring when Mr. Summers is calling out the names, and it seems like the town goes grave and quiet. Everyone is holding their sheets of paper, afraid to look and see who the lucky winner is. When the Hutchinson family gets selected, you could see the hesitancy of Tessie, who understands what is going on, and Nancy’s friends, who would probably be supporting her in a traditional lottery, are wishing that Nancy would not