Lottery???

Words are without a doubt the most important part of language. Communication without words would be nearly impossible. These words normally evoke certain feelings and thoughts in people. For example, in America football brings up thoughts of grown men crashing into each other. However, these thoughts are not always the only way to look at a word. Football in the rest of the world brings people thoughts of what Americans know as soccer. The interpretation and perception of words are explored in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.





In the realm created by Jackson, there is an annual lottery. When most people think of the lottery, certain thoughts. Images of people buying weekly tickets hoping to win exuberant sums of money. However from the beginning of the there are some oddities. The children start gathering stones and stuffing them in their pockets and pushing them into piles. Then Mr Summers, the lottery director, "soberly" announces the start of the lottery. These oddities are fairly minor and hard to notice during the first reading, however the story turns truly strange when a family is announced a winner. The wife Tessie Hucthison begins yelling that the lottery "wasn't fair." All these oddities eventually cause a horrifying realization that the lottery in this world is completely different from the lottery in our world.



This twist on the word "lottery" is refreshing. Jackson managed to take a word with a commonly perceived meaning and shown another way to percieve the word. "The Lottery" showed me how awesome stories can become if the perceptions of words are changed even thought the new perceptions still fall under the definition of the word. I encourage people to read the "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and become refreshed with a different perception of a common word.