THE LOTTERY- LITERARY CRITICISM ( READER’S RESPONSE)

The story describes a fictional small American community which observes an annual tradition known
as "the lottery", in which a member of the community is selected by chance and stoned to death to
ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens.
The lottery, its preparations, and its execution are all described in detail, though what actually
happens to the selected person is not revealed until the end.

Personally, I can relate to Mr. Summers, the lottery official. Why? Because, in my family I am the
middle child. Like Mr. Summers, I also tend to just be an observer about the events or disputes that's
happening inside our community. As a youth in my community I should be an active and cooperative
in any events that my community is doing. But having the title of “Bread winner” is so hard to
participate in any occasions being held. The pressures are too much that I think I couldn’t handle
more of it, It may sounds that the pressure is hindering to show what I am capable of, it is the only
way to survive with less damage.

I actually agree about the allegory of the short story. In every choice we make for a certain
circumstance there will be a sacrifice, may it be big or small. [ "Some places have already quit
lotteries" Mr. Adams said. "Nothing but trouble in that... Pack of young fools." Old Man Warner
replied. ] This exchange supports the interpretation of how young people mostly think there's right
and wrong, while matured people picks the 'less damaging' choice rather than thinking in black and
white. Furthermore, in our society today depends on what old people is going to say. That could be
the reason why we understand the literature this way, it may not makes sense to everybody but we
will still stand on what we believed.

My opinions were not changed and was actually supported by the theme of the short story. Anyone
may have a different perspective and this is ours. The theme made sense to me when I was thinking
about it after I read the literature. I understand what is the author trying to tell to everybody, it could
be bad or good. It may look like we sided the bad side, this isn’t what we meant. We just supported
the thoughts that literature is giving and how we comprehend the literature.

["It's not the way it used to be," Old Man Warner said clearly. "People aren’t the way they used to
be."] For people with the same opinion on this concept is easy to understand, but for those who
doesn't it might be complicated. Complicated for those who doesn't agree because, they haven't had
the chance to experience it. Simple for those with the same opinion because, they have been through
that situation or they disagreed at first but had changed perspective after experiencing the situation
first hand. People who is experiencing what we experienced could understand where we stand on
this opinion of ours that most people wouldn’t get it.

One thing that's remarkable about the short story is how the title misleads the reader into thinking
that it's a regular lottery, where the winner gets a prize contrary to what it actually is. It actually made
me think about the movie The Hunger Game's with the 'reaping' scene and another story called The
Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas with the 'sacrifice one person for the town's abundance' theme.
It's like the two things were combined in this story, which made me read through the whole story
despite it being slow paced —something that i am not accustomed of— However, for me, the ending
was a bit underwhelming. For the reason that it wasn't surprising but also not unexpected. Who
would expect someone will get eliminated when we thought “the lottery” as the usual lottery we used
to know in the first place. It’s not the usual novel we used to read but we perceived it for sure very
different from others and usual reaction when someone is getting slayed. But we’re so overpopulated
and thinking of people in the literature did to minimize the people is fair but unjust at the same time
makes so sense to us.

As mentioned above, I found it entertaining that it was similar with the two medias that I have been
exposed to —The Hunger Games and The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas — In terms of art, I
liked that you can connect or translate it in a lot of things. Another thing is I especially liked how the
story was constructed, where you can only see the whole point of the story at the end because of a
certain detail being revealed, the detail that fills the spaces in the story. However, it is not very
detailed. The literature didn’t state why they have to do such tradition in every detail and how it got
started. That give us reader’s a different interpretation of the literature.

Aside of writing the literature great, We would like to say that the author used unfamiliar words that
can give the reader’s a new words to know or like broaden the reader’s vocabulary. We like it when
we read some story, literature, poem or any readings that contains different unfamiliar words because
it will help us widen our vocabulary and English proficiency. It can help us in the future with a lot of
things and also can give us a loads of opportunities.

Additionally, the language used is English. We will always interested reading using the English
language, as it is going to help us learn and practice our English proficiency. Reading this literature
gave us a lot of learnings and made us who we are, like we are being ourselves while writing this
response and we gave our opinion despite of it being a little bit different from others.

g. To conclude this reader’s response, I would say I won't specifically choose to read a story or
literary piece with the same pace and theme on purpose. Nonetheless, if I were to read something
and realize it's kind of the same, that won't make me stop reading it. I'd recommend this type of story
to our friends because, they likes it when a literary piece can be interpreted in a lot of ways, exactly
like the literature we just given a response as a reader.