Out of the short stories that we’ve read so far, the one that had captivated me the most would be “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. I chose this short story as my favorite one so far because of its use of irony, conflict and foreshadowing throughout the story. Every year, the community plays an annual game with all of the villagers writing their name in a piece of paper, and someone would pick out one piece of paper with someone’s name on it. Any reader would most likely assume that the person whose name was picked out would win something out of the lottery. Instead, the person would end up getting stoned to death by all of the other villagers. That part really caught me off-guard, and it had me intrigued for what happened afterwards. It was also ironic because Tessie Hutchison, who was chosen in the lottery to get stoned to death, was among those who were excited as to whose name would get picked in the lottery, only for her to be the name picked later in the story. I was intrigued by the surprising turn of events, and I wouldn’t have thought that she would end up getting picked. It made sense as to why they would do it annually, since it’s seen as a tradition for the villagers, but I felt that they could’ve gone about the lottery in a better way than to kill the chosen villager. Additionally, I liked how they used a sense of foreshadowing in the story by using the children playing with the stones as a form of foreshadowing to the fatal stoning. I also chose this story, since it was interesting to me that they presented it as a person vs. society form of conflict, as it revolves around Tessie Hutchison against the other villagers. Therefore, the use of irony, conflict and foreshadowing made the story fascinating for me to read, and contributed as to why this was the short story that stood out to me the most so far.