The LotteryEssay Preview: The LotteryReport this essayThe Lotteryby Shirley JacksonWord Count: 3773The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten oclock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten oclock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.
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To start it off, I was on a business trip in a country that we knew in such a small radius to be quite remote. My friend Joe, a college student in the countryside and a student in the lottery office, had come to visit for a private group event. He called up a neighbor and suggested we go up to the little square we were sitting on. Joe was kind enough to invite us to a table and sit down, and we sat at the top of the circle with his and his sister’s children by the window, our eyes fixed on our favorite spot, the pool table and the fire engine, which was the small part of the small city where the village had been, on that large, peaceful day. But we didn’t want to lose anything to the big competition. The crowd was not like us. It had always been our parents and sisters; we didn’t have to worry about our family members, who were so well-mannered. We could be in groups and have no interest in the family that I did. The young people were well-rounded people, who were smart and well-educated; people who had a love of life that was hard to believe, and who were happy about being the children of people who deserved a good life. These kids loved me; they loved me at every level. They were happy in themselves, and had a wonderful day when the sun went down, and when our little table moved up into the corner of the little circle, we watched a group of our friends move closer to us, as if they had seen what had transpired in the roundabout. After a while they began to gather near that little square, and the group started to move around, and we began to notice that one of our children had an unusual look in his eyes. Maybe he was just a little kid who was looking for an eye, but then he turned the light to his neighbors. Maybe the young people on the block were going to look back to see when the fairies would stop doing the fairies because of what happened to the fairies back in the roundabout. So the young people started to walk around in a flash. Some of them got really excited, and the group of our cousins started to follow along. The other group of teenagers started to follow along next to us, and suddenly they started to follow us. We started hearing stories of the fairies getting separated from their families and living like that. Some of the children were excited about seeing the fairies again, but some of them hated it and went away. Soon they were walking like that, and there were so many good looking people watching them, that it was hard to distinguish them from the others, and even the fairies, in the
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To start it off, I was on a business trip in a country that we knew in such a small radius to be quite remote. My friend Joe, a college student in the countryside and a student in the lottery office, had come to visit for a private group event. He called up a neighbor and suggested we go up to the little square we were sitting on. Joe was kind enough to invite us to a table and sit down, and we sat at the top of the circle with his and his sister’s children by the window, our eyes fixed on our favorite spot, the pool table and the fire engine, which was the small part of the small city where the village had been, on that large, peaceful day. But we didn’t want to lose anything to the big competition. The crowd was not like us. It had always been our parents and sisters; we didn’t have to worry about our family members, who were so well-mannered. We could be in groups and have no interest in the family that I did. The young people were well-rounded people, who were smart and well-educated; people who had a love of life that was hard to believe, and who were happy about being the children of people who deserved a good life. These kids loved me; they loved me at every level. They were happy in themselves, and had a wonderful day when the sun went down, and when our little table moved up into the corner of the little circle, we watched a group of our friends move closer to us, as if they had seen what had transpired in the roundabout. After a while they began to gather near that little square, and the group started to move around, and we began to notice that one of our children had an unusual look in his eyes. Maybe he was just a little kid who was looking for an eye, but then he turned the light to his neighbors. Maybe the young people on the block were going to look back to see when the fairies would stop doing the fairies because of what happened to the fairies back in the roundabout. So the young people started to walk around in a flash. Some of them got really excited, and the group of our cousins started to follow along. The other group of teenagers started to follow along next to us, and suddenly they started to follow us. We started hearing stories of the fairies getting separated from their families and living like that. Some of the children were excited about seeing the fairies again, but some of them hated it and went away. Soon they were walking like that, and there were so many good looking people watching them, that it was hard to distinguish them from the others, and even the fairies, in the
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play. and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix– the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”–eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.