Quite the morbid story, don't you think?
If you have not read The Lottery, I highly recommend it. It is now one of my favorite short stories I have read.
Considering the time it was written, one can only imagine the sort of uproar a story like this created. Actually, I typed the story into google to learn a little more about it, and read about the uproar it created. Hooray for advances in modern science.
But, on to the story. A happy gathering of people, where people happily wait for someone to be chosen to die. It is a lottery, about as fair as it gets when it comes to chances. But it is not fair once someone has been called upon.
There are a lot of themes running around in this story, but I think that the driving theme is how human nature is unfair, and also disrespectful.
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4/4 entries for 9/11/09 (but make sure that in addition to articles, you are reading sustained, book-length works for your ind. rdg.)
ReplyDeleteThoreau was Emerson's disciple, and so the tribute seems just to me. What exactly did you find strange?
The Lottery is following in the tradition of the Corn King tales--as does Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, if you'd like to read a medieval tale.
Do you need more nonfiction suggestions? You'd probably enjoy Sedaris's work. As you read a collection, you can put together a sort of continuous narrative, though each of the essays exist independently also.