Month: June 2020

Shirley Jackson’s short story called “The Lottery” is a dystopian story that teaches an important lesson about the society. A small town has a lottery every year, and one citizen is picked to be stoned to death by the other citizens. Jackson portrays through her story that rules or traditions should not be blindly followed just because they are traditions.

The ending of “The Lottery” was particularly surprising to me. I was taken aback when I found out that the assumingely “lucky” citizens was to be stoned to death. Since everyone was dressed up, and laughing before the actual lottery happened, it made me go onto the wrong track. However, there were things that I barely paid attention to until we brought it up in the group conversation. These things foreshadowed a ghastly ending.

The black box foreshadowed something evil hence the color black. Black is normally assumed to be the color of death, fear, and evil. Another thing was the strange name, Mr. Graves. This foreshadowed the death of one of our characters, who would brutally end up in a grave.

This story’s ending and way of illustrating the theme was very unnerving to me. It was almost unworldly that people would have the nerve to stone their loved ones and friends to death. However this made the theme a lot clearer, almost standing out. Jackson’s way of conveying the theme was a little harsh, especially the last phrase; “and they were upon her”. Still, this shows the consequences of blindly following traditions. This hits you hard when you read the story and it glues the theme to your head.

Overall, I think Jackson’s way of portraying the theme was very straightforward and quite dark, though very useful for emphasizing the theme. I was super surprised by the ending but it helped convey the theme. I really enjoyed reading this short story and the theme is going to help me in my future life.

Between the bridge of dream and reality

You wake up early in the morn

In your bed you soon realize

A new day is born

You get up from your bed

Sleepiness deteriorating

You open the window to see the sunlight

The day ahead is waiting

You go out for a walk

Nature calms your mind

Trees are thriving, grass is growing

An experience for a lifetime

You breathe, inhale and exhale

You meditate and relax and quiet

You learn, you read; you listen to music

You gain nutrients on a healthy diet

Today is mission accomplished

Your mind was fully engaged

Night is arriving very soon

Your good night’s sleep awaits

Most people have problems with their memory on some days and not others. When you are feeling alert, well rested and healthy, you are less likely to have problems with everyday remembering. But if you have been having a bad day, or are tense or depressed, you may experience problems with your memory.

Since memory is part of your thinking and learning process, it makes sense that anything that interferes with optimum brain function can affect how well you retrieve and store information. Both your body and your mind – hence your memory – are influenced by diet, medications, stress level, exercise, smoking, and relaxation.

Your mood affects your ability to remember. When you can’t remember something, you can get even more frustrated and create even more stress, which in turn affects your memory. Anxiety and depression are the two major causes of memory problems at any age. When you are deeply depressed or overstressed, you tend to turn inward. You do not record information the way you normally do and your thoughts are occupied with negative emotions. It is important to relax and de-stress so your memory function can get back to normal. Practice breathing and visualization techniques every day so that when you need them, they will be second nature to you.

Not eating a balanced diet can also have a negative impact on your memory, as it can impair the nervous system. Too many food additives and too much sugar contribute to memory malfunction. You need a healthy diet full of vitamins, minerals, iron, and protein.

You also need to drink plenty of water. Have you ever felt tired and disoriented in the middle of the day, and perked up after having some water? That is because dehydration can lead to confusion and other thinking problems.

Getting enough sleep is also essential for a good memory. This gives your brain some needed rest and relaxation. During certain periods of deep sleep that occur about every hour and a half, the brain disconnects from the senses and processes, reviews, consolidates, and stores memory. To interfere with this crucial time of sleep will seriously affect how your memory functions.

Alcohol, smoking, and caffeine are all memory inhibitors. Consuming too much of these will impair your ability to store new information and cause short term memory loss.

It may not be easy at first, but moderating your lifestyle and living in a healthy, balanced way can have a tremendous impact on you and your memory.

The Lottery is a story about a small town and their yearly ritual. Their “ritual” includes of drawing papers out from a vintage black box. Each man of the families would pick a slip of paper out from the box and the family with the black spot on their slip would be “chosen”. Then, each family member would draw again and the member with the black spot would be stoned to death by all the villagers.

As a reader of The Lottery, I presumed that whoever won the lottery would be given a sum of cash, as that’s what a lottery in our time period is. My opinion on this short story is,” I was taken aback on how the lottery was not just a raffle for cash, but a raffle to be stoned to death”. I personally do recommend this story to others, as it seems all sweet and innocent but in the end there is a very interesting plot twist. The theme of the story is sometimes, people take myths to another level. This is the theme, because in The Lottery, the villagers believed stoning someone would ensure them good crops.

The story starts of on a nice summer day, with the townspeople arriving at the town square to join in on the lottery. Mr. Summers brings in a black box with sheets of papers inside of them. When the lottery is about to start, Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late because she apparently forgot what day it was. The villagers laughed over her silly mistake and the lottery began. As Mr. Summers called out each family name, the man of each family began arriving to pick up a slip from the box. Once all had their slips, they soon discovered that Bill Hutchinson had drawn the black spot. Tessie soon became defensive and angry on how her husband did not have enough time to draw the slip. The members of Bill’s family, Bill, Bill Jr., Nancy, Dave, and Tessie soon drew slips from the box. All of the family slowly opened their slips, and eventually they discovered Tessie had the black spot. The villagers moved around Tessie and stoned her to death. In conclusion, many people will believe in traditions even though it may be unmoral.

In the short story The Lottery, roles are different for the two different genders. The eldest man is the one who picks out the slip for the whole family during the drawing of slips for the lottery. If it can be helped, women should not be the one to take the slip. Only if there are no more males over the age of sixteen, can the eldest woman get the slip. Additionally, the family name is inherited from the male parent, but that it also what happens in modern society.

Among the kids, boys are usually the ones to play with the rocks and mess around. Girls would stand to the side and talk amongst each other. The man of the family would come first, then the woman shortly after. The women would gossip around with each other for a little, and then join their husbands standing off to the side. Then the children would have to stop their play and go to their parents. Young women who recently married would be in the same family group as their husbands and leave their siblings and parents.

I think that “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is a great story of irony and theme for real life. It has different themes such as human nature, family structure, and the role of gender, and dystopian society and conformity. Many people have their own opinions about “The Lottery”, but I am one who likes the short story mainly because of the main theme that is the mindless adherence to tradition. This book has a theme that I like the most which was the family structure. From what I have heard about families is that the poorer the family, the more love there is, but the more wealthy the family is, the less love there is within the house. This isn’t always true, but from my perspective, it is. Many people have their own story just like “The Lottery”, but the family structure in the Hutchinson household is not that very good because Tessie shows dislike and infuriates all those who do like the lottery that is in the story. I feel like the Hutchinson parents did not teach their kids very well because of how Tessie acts towards the lottery that was held. She was very churlish and insolent. She was very innocuous. “The Lottery is a very well done short story by Shirley Jackson and I would recommend many people read her short stories that are based on real-life and her themes that she puts in her stories are fascinating.

The villagers of a small town gather together on a warm summer day for the town lottery. There are only 300 people in this village, so the lottery takes only two hours, ending right before lunch. Village children, who have just finished school for the summer, run around collecting stones. They put the stones in their pockets and make a pile in the square. Men and women also gather stones, ready for the upcoming. Parents call their children over, and families stand together.

Mr. Summers runs the lottery because he has a lot of time to do stuff about the village. He arrives in the square with the a bunch of slips. A male that is 16 or older of each family comes and draws a slip. The family with the black dot is the one family that will lose on of their family today. The Hutchinson’s family was chosen.

Then, the second round began, and every family member in the Hutchinson’s family picked a slip. The one who had the black dot was Tessie Hutchinson, or mommy Hutchinson. All the villagers pick up their stones, even her son, Davy, did so, and all of them threw and threw until Tessie was stoned to death. She died complaining about how unjust this was, and we couldn’t agree more.

This story is about a fictional ritual where in a town, they “sacrificed” one person for the ritual. The lottery was when the people from the town each chooses a piece of paper from a box, and the person that chooses the piece of paper with the black dot is sacrificed and essentially stoned to death. This was done so they “could have good fortune and crops”. The main people in this story is Bill, and Tessie.

When they were choosing the box, Tessie was complaining because she claimed Mr. Summer, the guy doing the hosting the lottery didn’t give Bill enough time to choose the paper. (Note that Bill was choosing a paper for Tessie) Once everybody started to open up the paper, many people got blank so they were fine. However when it got to Tessie, Tessie’s paper wasn’t blank. It had a black dot. Then they started to stone her, and Tessie’s last words were “IT WASN’T FAIR!!”.

The moral of this story is that we shouldn’t always follow according to a old tradition, especially since the tradition could be bad and we shouldn’t do it anymore like the one in the story.

“The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry is a short story that is set in a town in Alabama called Summit. It portrays two kidnappers, Bill and Sam, who are trying to make a ransom off of this crime. One day, they notice a young boy throwing rocks at a kitten, and they decide that this is the perfect child to kidnap. They offer him some candy and expect him to get in the buggy with them easily, but, instead, the kid, Johnny throws a brick at Bill and hits him in the eye. When Johnny realizes where they are going, he is extremely excited to go camping and be away from his home, which is the exact opposite of what Bill and Sam expected to happen. Later, they send a letter back to Johnny’s father saying that if he pays Bill and Sam 1,500 dollars, they will return Johnny to him. After they send the letters, they quickly become fed up with Johnny. The father knows how much of a distraction and troublemaker Johnny is, so he realizes the kidnappers probably want to get rid of him. As a result, the dad tells Bill and Sam that if they pay him 250 dollars, they can return Johnny. They agree. 

This short story may seem like a typical fun short story for kids, but it holds several important meanings throughout it. One theme that is revealed is, do not try to obtain money from doing wrong actions, but instead earn it from hard work. These two kidnappers were trying to get money from taking advantage of others, but in the end, they had to pay money instead of receiving money. In the real world, kidnapping is a much more significant crime than shown in the short story. People can be sentenced to jail for years, but if they worked hard, they could most likely gain the same amount of these beneficial things they are trying to obtain. If they worked hard, they would not have to face all these consequences. 

Another theme that is shown is that once something is becoming a problem, don’t continue trying to keep it for a reward. Most likely, keeping this issue, for example, Johnny is probably not worth the money that comes with him. Even if they were to keep Johnny longer so that they would obtain all the money, they still wouldn’t obtain that money because Johnny’s father is okay with them taking Johnny for a few days. The outcome would probably be the same, but they would have just kept Johnny for longer, making it a hassle to them. Umm… 🙂

The coronavirus is a new type of virus that has kicked off in 2020 starting in china it has spread all across the world. The cornavirus is new so the doctors haven’t had a cure for it, the doctors are going against time to try and find a cure with every day failed a few hundred people will die. Now that the world is aware that there is a deathly virus in town the spread is becoming slower and slower as people finally find out the dangers behind this virus, they might rarely go out to buy food, they might go on lock down, and in some places the coronavirus has forced some people to take down food trucks and fight over the drops.

The cornavirus death rate is unknowable because officials don’t know who died from the virus and who had it, also for some weird reason they are saying a lower death rate than what there actually is. Maybe it’s to calm down all the people or they just don’t what people to know. In my opinion the coronavirus stinks and why couldn’t it come in the summer where everyone is at home. So you may ask yourself why do you need to know about this virus well in a book I read called Fever 1988 it was about the yellow fever and that fever kinda reminds me of the cononavirus because every one was hiding in houses and trying to find food and live the fever so they started stealing and every few people were trying to help this is about all I got so I hope that you learned stuff from the coronavirus in this two short paragraph.