Sticks and Stone... Blog 2 Tina Radstone

I did Blog 2 on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson which is a short story that portrays a small village that partakes in the annual ritual of having a lottery in which the "prize" isn't money; it is the stoning of a towns person that picks a piece of paper with a black mark on it. The ritual although seems very primal and barbaric, is carried out every year in this modern town. The speaker in this story is told in third person, dramatic point of view. The author does this so that the reader isn't totally informed what is going on and so that she doesn't give out any obvious conclusions. Jackson only gives little hints as to what is going on in the story so that the reader can make their own conclusions. In the beginning of the story Jackson starts out the story by telling us, "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of the summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely..." (140). This opening of the story starts out describing what the day is like. It made me feel as though I could actually smell the flowers  that were blossoming and could feel the heat of the sun on my face. It also makes the reader feel in the beginning that it is going to be a good day for the lottery and someone is going to be happy because they are winning some money. This is exactly what Jackson's intentions were. There are no hints, she isn't telling us how people feel, she didn't lead us to the way we think that the story is suppose to go. Jackson also talks about the gathering of stones from the children. The author states, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys soon followed his example..." (140). When I was reading this I couldn't make out what these boys were going to do with the stones because it was the beginning of the story and there was no specific point made what they were going to do with them. For all I knew and was thinking is that there were boys gathering stones so I thought that maybe they were going to play some game with them. It's not until the end of the story that you are told exactly what these stones are going to be used for. The character Tessie Huchinson was standing in the center of some space that was cleared out for her and the towns people gathered around and you then know she is being stone because it states on page 145, "A stone hit her on the side of the head." My mouth dropped opened because I really didn't want to think that something so uncivilized and cruel was happening in that small modern day town. If the narrator in this story would have told her point of view in the first person, I believe that the story's ending wouldn't have had the same effect on us as she telling the story in third person. My point is that in first person speaker Jackson would have talked about things that she has done heard, and thought from her first hand experiences. (123). If she had done then she would have expelled the reason why these children were gathering stones and what kind of lottery it really was. If this was done then the whole premise of the reader drawing their own conclusion wouldn't have happened.