Reading journal #2

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

How can they be able to process to such a ceremony?
What is the trip of killing someone?
If I was part of this communauty, would I have the courage to diagree about this coutume?
What was based on this ritual?

At first, for sure, I don't agree with the idea of sending somone to death just because it has always been like that, but if I thougt about the reasons of such an abominal rite. I started to do researches to known if it was true, if it really existed and I learned that it happened before in Mississippi, in the post-war years. When Shirley Jackson's short story was published during the late 1940s, it sure created controversy; some people even said that we was just someone who liked to twiste the old values and trditions of small towns of America into pure violence. In this manner, he was interviewed and he answered: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."I guess publishing this story was a way for him to denounce those rites. Anyway, even knowing it was done because of believes, I still have trouble understanding how convictions can be strong enough to stone or kill someone.

In order to understand why people in the story didn't disagree about this tradition, except for Tessie who screams "It isn't fair." when she "wins" the lottery. Once again, she reacts only when she's chosen, this is kind of ugly when we think of the legendary egocentrism of humans. The hypocrisy of the society is well illustrated; it also proves that people can believe strong enought to let their lot into the hands of magic or destiny. Am I like that, I would not pretend that in a similar situation, I would've doo something because I don't know, but I can say that I found it out of sense.

I'm working understanding it!