The Lottery Response

A person hears the lottery and think money, happy, and luck.  Well in the short story "The Lottery" the person that wins thinks the exact opposite.  They think horrible, devastating, and death because the short story ends with the death of a member in their community.  The story ends with a death in a family.  The story ends with heartbreak. 

At the beginning of the story many boys were outside collecting rocks and putting them into a pile.  What were they making a fort, a fire, or just playing with them?  What you really don't know when reading this story is that they are not making a fort or a fire they are collecting them so the community can use them to kill the lottery winner.  The boys putting the stones into a pile is a example of foreshadowing.  Foreshadowing is helpful when reading a story if you can recognize it because you can then realize what all leads up to the ending of the story.

Recognizing foreshadowing is very helpful when reading a story but also recognizing symbols is a helpful tool.  There are symbols in every book and story but many people don't take the time to think about them and what they mean.  Symbols can help you understand the story more and make it more interesting.  Some symbols in "The Lottery" are the stones, the black box, and the black dot on the piece of paper.  All of these symbols represent death.