The title of this story is unknown however, if I had a chance to give a name to this story, I would call it ‘Stones’. In the beginning of the story, when the children piled the stones, I feel that the author used this to foreshadow the consequences of the lottery. And stones acted heavily in the story because it played with mood and irony. Because to me, the stones meant two different ideas, one was a significance of joy and happiness and the other meant violation and pain. This proves that the term ‘Stones’ goes well along with the tension in this story. While reading the story, I thought the lottery as a lucky draw to choose a person who would have to sacrifice everything for everybody else’s sake. The text provided clues that led me to think this. For example, before the lottery, the mood was frequently changing from joy, to sober and back and forth. This meant that the lottery meant something unfortunate to the villagers. Another clue was when a few people were hesitant to help Mr. Summer support the black box because it was the box where the lottery had to be drawn out from and it surely meant that the lottery meant something very bad that even many villagers protested to touch it.
I felt frustrated when the end of the story wasn’t provided. But when we were given the mystery paper, I felt excited and very eager to find out what information he paper held. When I first received the paper, I thought that the ending of the story was inside it and too eager to find out I did not follow the instructions and tore open the paper as soon as I stepped out of class. I think I was extremely anxious inside and was too excited to read the paper.
When the black box was first shown to me, I related it as a lucky draw box and was quite anxious because I wondered on what the lucky draw might be about and whether if I will get drawn for this. At the end, I drew a blank paper I first impression was that I and not chosen for this and I was a bit upset. However, when I started to relate the vote to the story and how everybody was relived not to be chosen from the draw I was calmed after considering that there is a higher chance that blank papers meant something good.
When I read the end of the story, I felt sorry for Tessie and was more comfortable than before but I am a little bit hung because I could still not fully comprehend the true purpose of the lottery even though the author provided the consequences of it. However my prediction of sacrifice was correct. Tessie Hutchinson had to sacrifice herself for the sake of the village.
My predictions were right I feel satisfied that I was right because it felt like as if I could communicate with the author even though he just left scraps of clues behind. In order to make better predictions, I could have annotated passages of the text so that I can comprehend more deeply into the text and determine whether my prediction is likely or not.
The author left voids in the story because he wanted the reader to stay engaged with his writing and keep them wonder on about what will happen next. He also left voids to create tension between the reader and the writing, which teases the reader by providing details but not allowing the reader to figure out the main point.
Through this experience the power void impacted on how I read the story. The unknown title, author information attracted me to read the story. As I read, I kept on asking questions whenever I came across text clues or foreshadowing techniques. However, the delayed ending frustrated me as I hurried and skimmed across the text for any clues on the ending. This created tension in me as the author toyed with my patience. At the end when the mystery paper was handed out, it kept me asking questions on it as I started to relate it to different situations or stories; this kept me curious and impatient.
No comments:
Post a Comment