Gabriela D’Andrea
4/12/07
The Lottery
1. Many people feel that humans are inherently violent. How does this story illustrate
the violent nature of people? Can we ever expect people to become nonviolent? Write
an essay about these issues.
This story demonstrates the violent nature of people. For seventy-seven years the
villagers of this town were having this lottery.
“Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,” Old man Warner said as he went through the
crowd. “Seventy-seventh time.”
This lottery was like any other civic activity. Every year on June 26 at ten
o’clock in the morning, the people in this small town and many others were excited to
prepare for a lotto that took only two hours. An old, black and wooden box had the
names of the three hundred people in this village. Each name of the head of the families,
heads of households in each family and members of each family was written on slips of
paper. The prize for the winner was not a nice and desired prize. It was the life of a
person. Adults prepared a pile of stones and children had their pockets full of the
smoothest and roundest pebbles. All the villagers took the same chance and the winner
of the lottery must die. Everybody wanted to start and end with this as soon is possible.
“Well, now,” Mr. Summers said soberly, “guess we better get started, get this over with,
so’s we can go back to work. Anybody ain’t here?”
The stool was put in the center of the square and the black box on it. The crowd
kept their distance, leaving a distance between themselves and the stool. The official of
the lottery called the people one by one so everybody could have their chance to draw.
“Now, I’ll read the names-heads of families first- and the men come up and take a paper
out of the box.” Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone
has had a turn. Everything clear?”
Some of the people hesitated, nervous and smiling, but each person reached into
the black box and took out a slip of folded paper. They held it firmly as they returned to
the crowd, where they did not look down at their hands. Finally, everyone opened the
slips of paper, and only one had the black spot on it, the black spot made the night before
by Mr. Summer. The unlucky winner was Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson.
For unknown reasons even Mrs. Delacroix, Mrs. Hutchinson’s friend was
prepared with a selection of large stones that she had to pick up with both hands.
Everyone participated in this awful and terrible lottery, including little Davy Hutchinson,
Tessie’s youngest son had some pebbles to throw at his mother. Everybody was upon
Tessie Hutchinson.
Even though, they talked about giving up the lottery, they continued with the same
tradition every year.
“Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, ‘that over in the north
village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.”
“Old Man Warner snorted. Pack of crazy fools,” he said. ‘Listening to the young folks,
nothing’s good enough for them.”
In conclusion, the world would be better if it had less violence. Unfortunately,
every day we hear in the news about:
A husband who killed the wife.
A mother who abused her children.
A man who was seriously attacked for being black, Hispanic, or gay.
Countries in war for silly reasons.
People doing terrorist attacks killing innocent people.
Cities like Juarez (Mexico) hundreds of women are dying in the last few years after being
abused physical and mentally.
Other countries people prefer to take justice in their hand instead of waiting for the
authorities to do it.
Students in college or school kill their classmates for any little reason.
Employees blame and kill their coworker for their personal problems.
Many people like in this story kill only because of superstition, ambition, revenge or just
because they have mental disorder.
Everything depends on the society where we live. Where there is no sense of unity and
family people tend to be more aggressive. They do not control their emotions and
impulses. Why do we see more crimes and more violence? We can hope that we can stop
or reduce the violence especially with the young people, but it is very difficult to achieve.
First, we need to change the society, educated people to have a sense of respect to each
other, and other people’s life.
Second, people need to learn to control their temper and anger.
Third, every individual has to avoid watching violent movies, talk shows and videos
games.
Fourth, parents and householders have to supervise their children and make sure that they
are not involved in gangs, guns and drugs.
The authorities also need to help to put programs for young people who have problems
with anger management. Most of the serious killers show their wrong behavior at an
early age, but many times the parents do not want to admit that their child had anger
management problems. Instead of looking for professional help, they ignore the problem
and other innocents pay the consequences. I hope, one day we can all live in peace.