The Lottery- Response

The significance of Old Man Warner ‘s words is that since he is the oldest man in the town, he has the knowledge of what the original tradition of the lottery is all about because he had been in it for over seven decades. He repeatedly showed warning to the younger parents and the younger generation of what they are in for if they do away with the lottery. Being involved in the lottery for such a long period of time, Old Man Warner knows best about the risks that he is taking. Young people in our society today are easily attracted to things that do not always end up the right way. For instance, as young people, the most common excuse to escape their faults is the “everyone’s doing it” excuse. One of the greatest and most common examples is smoking; young people get too caught up with their social life that they forget about protecting themselves. The risks and harmful situations they are putting themselves into can cause their lifetime: addiction. Things do not always have to have a first try; the best thing to do is to step out of things or situations like this. In other circumstances, for example, peer pressure also plays a huge role in our society today. Many young people are influenced negatively by their friends or peers. Hence, if they do not follow what their friends do, their friends will either go from not being friends with them anymore, to a more serious situation: life threatening. The heavy moral lesson that Old Man Warner had spoken out to us is that things are necessary to be thought twice rather than once because the littlest situation may cause a serious addiction that can lead to death.

Young Folks: What are we aiming for?

Young people are either looked down upon or seen as the future. People (adults) see us as fragile and influential individuals, and when we are given the right information and have a positive attitude, we can accomplish great things and make right what the older generations have done wrong. We have the ability to change the outlook of future generations on issues like multiculturalism and human rights. We are sort of like trees, give us water and good soil with nutrients, and we will grow to be big, strong, and we will help recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen (we give back to whomever decides to give us something). But put us in the wrong environment with not enough sunlight, we wither and die.



Adolescents also have a tendency to start to think for themselves. Yes, we are still learning and growing and are subject to peer pressure, but we have our own minds and sometimes we choose to use our own judgement. We deal with different situations that our parents might have had to deal with. For example, religion. We live in a very multicultural society where it is okay to "hang out" with someone who is not the same race or colour as you are. A popular problem that comes up all the time is dating someone who is not the same race, religion or colour as you are. Our parents have given us the gift of life, and we do have somewhat of an obligation to at least obey their wishes, but when it comes to someone you have to spend the rest of your life with you have to make a smart choice. Just because someone is the same religion as you does not mean that they will have the exact same core values as you do (which is what most parents argue). In a multicultural society, us "youngsters" have to learn that we cannot fear what we do not know much about. We need to make smart choices, and we have to trust our own gut feeling because sometimes our parents or the older people we look up to may be wrong.

We also have an important role for our natural environment too. Generations before us have been ruining our environment. It is only now that adults are trying to train us to go green and do our part to give back to the environment. It is almost an obligation that we have to clean up the mess that past generations have made. We love our earth, but we hate doing the dirty work. We have been unfortunately born into a society where people are already faced with these problems, its now our job to help try to reverse the symptoms of our sick earth.

Us kids and teenagers will only be young for so long. Then we will grow up and become the adults who will either see the potential right or potential wrong in the future generations. We will do our best to be the best we can be, and change the world to make it a better place. Being born into a more open-minded society (even though we still have to keep our traditions in order) and being taught to go green is really going to help us help earth.

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After our great class discussion about Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" I thought it would be appropriate to continue our thoughts on here.

We didn't get to discuss this in class, but I want to look at one section of the text that may pertain to you:

"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."

Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while.

Comment on one, or all of the following:

What part of our society should be re-evaluated? Is there anything that we do that should be questioned? OR is it acceptable to live according to customs in order to keep things in order.

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?


Due: Nov 20