blog #4 Andrew Snyder

1) In "The Lottery," by Shirely Jackson, the main focus of the story is the plot itself and how everything unfolds within it.  The point of view is third person objective, because the story is told as it is seen and setting takes place in a small town that the lottery is praticed in.  There are not alot of characters that really have a chance to develop except for Tessie Hutchinson, who as we all know gets stoned at until the very end of the story.  At first we feel empathetic towards her as a regular housewife and mom, but once she is chosen, her true colors shine out and leave the reader feeling not as empathetic when she gets stoned.  I have read "The Lottery" mulitple times in many different classes, but I will always remember the first time I read it and the shock value it gives the reader at the very end.  That is why the plot is the most important literary device in the story because we have no idea what the lottery actually is until Ms. Hutchinson's demise in the end.  When you first read it, you have no idea where "The Lottery" is heading with it's plot, but it all comes together at the end when the true nature of the lottery is revealed.  It really does give the reader quite a shock, but also opens the door for alot of questions for the reader to start thinking about in relation to the plot and why it works so well.

7) There definatly is a relationship that can be seen between "The Lottery" and "The Hunger Games."  In both stories, there is a large society that follows a once a year sacrifice for the greater good of everybody.  In "The Lottery," a small town conducts a lottery once a year and whoever wins, gets the honors of being killed in order to perserve harvest for the town.  We see similarities in "The Hunger Games," where in this story's world, there are twelve colonies that conduct a drawing to decide who will be put up to participate in the Hunger Game, where kids fight each other to the death.  Both 'lotteries' that occur in each story, are used to strike fear throughtout each society to stay under control of the upper class.  Especially in the Hunger Games, where the bourgeoisie controls everything and use the Hunger Games to cast fear over the world's civilizations, and keep the ideas of the upper class sustained.  We can see this occur on a small scale in "The Lottery," with everybody having a silent fear of winning the town's annual lottery.  But despite this fear, the town's ritual keeps everything in check and hold the ideaology in place that has reigned this town for hundreds of years.