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What Is Normal In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

613 Words3 Pages

In the short story, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, the characters have a different type of normal. June 27, lottery day, marks the day of the death of an innocent person. As I read this story, I was very puzzled. This story made me think about the death of a person, whether be young or old, liked or disliked. The death on lottery day was thought to be normal in these towns, but it was not normal to me. This tradition is gruesome and made me uncomfortable that this could be normal to anyone, fictional or real. These people were killed with stones. The author said, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones..." (291). This quote really gave the element of death to the story. Bobby Martin and the rest of the characters in this book saw this, gathering stones and having a normal person be stoned to death, as a normal tradition. This is something that should be looked on as terrible, Bobby Martin was ready to murder someone. I was so puzzled by what they were doing and to them it was normal. The town participated in a yearly murder. Stoning someone to death for a tradition does not make any sense to me. This could not be compared to anything else in America. We do not celebrate any yearly murder celebrations. Which is a good thing. I wondered why any society would allow this. …show more content…

The author said, " 'Some places have already quit lotteries,' Mrs. Adams said. 'Nothing but trouble in that,' Old Man Warner said stoutly. 'Pack of young fools' " (297). Stopping this lottery was a good thought. The elders did not think so. The elders had been participating in the lottery their whole life. This is a very strange thing to me. If I grew up with that, I would think it would be normal too, but from the outside it seems like the worst thing in the world. I felt badly for these elders. This is a normal day in their life, but it would be the worst day in my

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