The Lottery

“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is a short story that takes place in a small town of about 300 people. They host a lottery every year, but the winner doesn't exactly “win”. This is a tradition that has been going on forever, but some of the townspeople disagree with the continuation of this event. There's not much more to say without telling you the ending, so I'll stop summarizing there. 

Right at the beginning, the author shares with the reader that there is an annual lottery in the town that the people want to abandon. After that, the story continues with why this lottery could be unwanted (and possibly outlawed) by telling the story of what happened one year when names were drawn.

The main reason that I am recommending this story to you is because the subject matter is a bit different and out of the ordinary. That's pretty vague, so let me expand. When you go to read this piece, from the title, you will probably expect to read about someone winning a million dollars or something like that. Right? Well, that's not what happens (and I won't ruin the end), but the winner does not get a prize of that nature.

The part that most stood out to me in this story was probably when I realized that the whole idea of this story was so obviously hinted at in the first three paragraphs. If you read this piece, you will see that the author added little notes after writing about something that would be important later, but without giving anything away. That gave it good personality and let me take some guesses about what was coming up.

http://americanliterature.com/author/shirley-jackson/short-story/the-lottery