The Lottery was a story of a town’s old superstious traditon. The purpose of
the lottery was to see who would be sacrificed so that the harvest would be
plentiful. The town did whatever it could so that the harvest would be
plentiful, even kill one of their loved ones. The character Mrs. Hutchinson was
the “winner” of that years harvest and was stone to death by the town’s
people. Her own son even threw a couple of pebbles at her. Mrs. Hutchinson
doesn’t see the evil in the lottery until she realizes that she could be the
“winner.” It was just another social gathering to her until she was
confronted with her ultimate fate. At the beginning of the story, Mrs.
Hutchinson’s attitude acts like it’s just like any other day. She knew that
it was the day of the lottery, but it never crossed her mind that maybe she
could die today. She walked in late and made small talk with her friends, then
met with her family. It was any other social event. She never showed fear that
today could be her last day living cause it never crossed her mind. Towards the
middle of the story, her family gets the black dot. Meaning that they all have
to choose a sheet of paper. One of them is marked and that means that the person
who receives the marked sheet is going to be sacrificed. Mrs. Hutchinson yells
out that her husband was rushed during the choosing of which family gets the
black dot. It seems like she is worried that a member of her family is going to
die. But when her family is asked how many members are in the family, she adds
her two daughters that are married into the count. Mrs. Hutchinson tried to
lower the odds of her getting the black dotted card by adding two family members
who shouldn’t be counted. The two daughters weren’t allowed to pick cards
with their immediate family because it was against lottery rules because they
were already married and had their husband’s name. Mrs. Hutchinson is now
getting paranoid. She mutters that they should start overt because it wasn’t
fair how her husband was rushed. She’s also pretty nervous about the outcome.
Her voice raised a little as she tried to convince the people around her to
start the lottery over again. At the end of the story she had an epiphany. She
realized she was going to die for an unfair reason. She says over and over again
that it wasn’t fair, what she was dying for. She starts to yell out to
everyone that this was unfair but she was too late. Suddenly the social
gathering wasn’t as pleasant as it first was for her. The people she was
making small talk with, her friends, and even her own son were picking up rocks
and preparing to throw them at her. Mrs. Hutchinson didn’t say anything about
the lottery until she realized that she was the victim. Maybe her words could
have stopped the lottery before it happened again, but she chose to keep her
thoughts to herself. She definantly would have found some people who felt the
same way about the lottery. She could have possibly formed a group to protest
the lottery, but by her just doing nothing about it, it led to her own demise.
The message rang pretty clear in my ears as I read the story. The author was
trying to say that humans usually don’t get involved until we have to or until
it involves us. Maybe our society should do the same. Instead of waiting for a
problem to happen, we as a society should go out and try prevent it.