CoffeeHouse #2-Jia Ning Li

In my perspective, Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was the most enjoyable short story we had read for our assignment. The story had a lot of foreshadowing in it made the twist a lot more interesting. My favorite foreshadowing in the short story had to be when the kids were picking up rocks for a game just before the lottery was about to start. I as the reader found it odd how the kids were picking up rocks for a game, but the game was never mentioned till we see another moment when someone threw the rock at Tessie. I also enjoyed how the author didn’t tell us what the lottery was. When we think of the lottery in modern times, we always think about the power ball where you win millions of dollars if you were the one who bought and guessed all the correct numbers in the lotto. But in the story, it’s the complete opposite where you didn’t want to be the chosen one to win the lottery because instead of winning millions of dollars, you get stoned to death instead. The story had made me think about questioning our traditions. The story implies that this was an ongoing tradition and that it was normal to stone someone to death. In fact, when I was reading the North village in the story wanted to give up on their lottery tradition, and old man Warner called them out for being crazy. This situation reminds me of the modern-day where a lot of conservatives like to live in the old way of times while the newer generation wants to have new rights and laws so that the future of their generation would live in a better world. Overall, this was my favorite short story because it had foreshadowing and because the author tackles on things like questioning our traditions just like we do in our modern time. -Jia Ning Li