And The Winner is,........

The only reason (besides the fact that it was assigned) why I continued to read this story until the end was to find out who "won" the lottery. I didn't really like it, nor did I enjoy the "climactic ending." The entire poem I thought " Hey! Someone is going to win the lottery! This is going to be good." I was unaware that the "winner" did not win anything but to get stoned. This story did not resonate anything in my personal life. I tried to think of any way that I could relate, but the only thing I could think of was the pink elephant gift exchange at Christmas time. Where everyone fights over the "mystery box", and when it finally gets open, the person who opened it is dissapointed to find out that the "mystery" was in fact a rubber chicken. These twisted endings get me every time.

There were many things within this story that foreshadowed the ending of the reading. On thing in particular was right in the beginning ot the story where the boys were picking out the smoothest and roundest stones and were placing them in the corner of the square. The reader may wonder, "Why did they do this", or maybe not even catch on to the importance of these rocks that were pilled up. Another foreshadow within the text was when the black box was placed right in the center of the square, as was Tessie Hutchinson was standing in the center of a cleared space. There was some sense of hesitation when people were going up to the tattered black box, but the reader may not assume that that meant the outcome of "winning" the lottery was a bad thing. The lesson that the author is hoping for the reader to gain is not to assume what the ending of the story is. The author obviously wanted to shock the reader, and wait until the very end to do so. The author also wanted the reader to feel the build up to that climax.