Brief Summary

"The Lottery" tells a story of a small American town which on the surface appears to be the home to roughly 300 average Americans. The town is readying itself for a ritual known only to the reader as "the lottery". The story begins on the clear and sunny morning of June 27th, however the mood of its residents is one of a strange, eerie nervousness. Children gather stones in hopes of a good harvest in the coming year, and the town collects around a small black box. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each household draws a slip of paper from the black box, followed by the second round where each family member draws a slip. After, each person checks their paper to see who's carries a black dot at the center. Tessie, a woman who arrives late to the lottery discovers that her paper bears the black dot, and such 'wins' the lottery. For her prize, Tessie is then stoned to death by the town.

Tuesday

On Lohafer

The entirety of "The Lottery" revolves around the ending. For this reason I'm not sure that Lohafer's experiment would work very well on Jackson's story because if the story ended at any other place, the plot would make absolutely no sense. From this, what I did find on my test of the story, using Lohafer's experiment, was that the last lot of lines were the only place in the story that I felt there was a fitting enough end to consider it a proper end point to the story. These lines make up the end of the story. What's interesting about them is that they all form this sort of cliffhanger ending, and they all could probably equally end the story with the same effect to the reader.
  • The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.
  • Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her.
  • A stone hit her on the side of the head.
  • "It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
Ultimately, Jackson purposely made the story end on a sharp note. Because of this I think the position of the ending was intentional, and if it were moved it would pull a lot away from the story. Not only does the story lose its entire meaning, but the foreshadowing of the children collecting the rocks loses all sense as well. In most stories which are well designed with plots that interconnect elements and tie up loose ends this could perhaps work. For instance, in "Aunt Lympy's Interferences", the story could possibly end because while the ending is foreshadowed slightly by Victor being outside painting the fence, it still serves some purpose even if he never approaches Melitte.
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