Short Stories: Potpourri: 1

"The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago." (265)

For this blog, I will be anwsering the fourth question after the short story, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The fourth question asks about the significance of original box being lost and parts of the ritual being forgotten. I think that the significance of these two things is that the lottery itself is also past its prime. The fact that all of these parts of the lottery are so outdated implies that the purpose of the lottery is also outdated. The original purpose of the lottery was probably to choose who would be sacrificed to get meat into the diet of the villagers. I gathered this purpose because the story says, "First thing you know, we'd all be eating chickweed and acorns." The tradition of sacrificing a member of the village is worn out, just as the box and actual preceedings are worn out. The old box and ritual being forgotten are long gone, and the tradition should be too.

Short Stories: Plot and Structure: 4

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted somehting from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."

This is the last poem in "A Rose for Emily." The effect is to give us a sense of what has been going on in the house for the past many years. It also verifies the actions many accused Miss Emily of while she was still living and locked in the house. The paragraph leads readers to change their view of Miss Emily from a scrooge type figure into one of a mourning daughter. The paragraph insinuates that Miss Emily poisoned her husband, Homer Barron, because she loved him so much that she wanted to be with him forever. I also got the feeling that she wanted to be in control, unlike when her father was taken from her. She wanted to make sure she could be with Homer forever, even if that meant killing him so he would never leave or die when she wasn't ready. I am sympathetic to Emily because she is just a mourning daughter, not ready to lose another significant man from her life, especially one that reminds her so much of her father. Miss Emily's fate was death, which is inevitably the fate for all of us. It makes it better that she was able to die after having spent a great deal of time with the one she loved. It also makes readers sad because she did not die next to her husband which is probably how she envisioned things going.