the lottery

     In "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, stoning is the main theme that runs the story.  Throughout this particular story the town’s people see that it is perfectly normal to stone someone, since this is what they have been doing for so long.  The youth of the town pick out all of the stones that are going to throw at that one very “lucky” individual.  During the movie that we watched in class it was strange to see that the young kids were gathering rocks and putting them in their pockets so they would have them to throw at that one person. The theme of stoning is something that we wouldn’t think would be something that would be taking place since this is not really something that we hear about on the daily, but this is something that goes on in other foreign countries. People grow accustomed to tradition and if grew up with this going on in their home town and having it be a small town we can all believe why they didn’t think that anything could be different. The idea of sacrificing someone because of the luck of the draw makes me think of the Hunger Games when they had to have someone from each county go and play the games. Also in harry potter when the goblet of fire and the pot draws one name from each school and only one will win. Because of these two instances this makes me believe that the small town has a sense of superstition and magic in its history.  Maybe what comes with the idea of superstition the people from the small town believe that they will gain something from the sacrifice, like in the recent movie “Red Riding Hood” with Amanda Syfred they sacrificed the towns best pig every full moon so the wolf wouldn’t kill someone.