I read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and I found two hot spots that interested me. The first hotspot was the last sentence of the story, on page 62, and it said “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” The whole story was about a small town who all participated in a lottery. I knew it was not a typical lottery with money from the introduction and by little hints throughout the book, but I did not think it would be a bad as what happened in the end. The hot spots made me think about a small creepy town in the movies when everyone appears to be very nice, but they all are actually sick. I could not imagine having a “lottery” every year and acting okay with it. The people there seemed very happy and friendly the whole time. I would be scared my family or I would be picked. I also could not imagine killing a kid if he or she was picked. It was a weird story and I did not like it. After I read it I felt weird because the story just gave me a really creepy feeling. It also made me think it was a town full of hillbillies be the way people were talking and acting.
My second hot spot from “The Lottery” was on page 59, when old man Warner said “pack of crazy fools” talking about other towns that had stopped doing the lottery. I did not chose this as a hot spot until I was done reading the story, probably because I did not know it was going to end so sickly. Before I knew the ending, I like that part because I thought it was a stereotypical old man acting like his way is the best, and nobody else could change his mind. After finishing the story though, I liked it for a much different reason. The reason why I liked it as a hot spot was because in his mind the other towns who did not end up killing someone were the sick ones, not his town that did kill someone. The old man saying this made me think that when people do something for so long, in their mind they think that it is normal and acceptable, even though the behavior is completely unacceptable. I read a book “A Long Way Gone” and it was about a boy soldier and he had so much trouble killing but after his first kill he loved it, and that is the only thing he wanted to do because his village was all a part of it and that is what they thought was right.
After reading “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien I found two hot spots that I really liked. One hot spot was on page 96 when the author says “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.” What I think the author is talking about is in the split second that the instant occurs, there are many different views on what actually happened and what people’s brains told them what happened. A lot of times I think that in war people are so scared and impacted by traumatic sights that their brains do not let them see what really happen. I think that a lot of times the brain will lie, like some sort of defense mechanism, so that person can still function and not be ruined by the experience. I feel like that is what happened in the story, and there is no way of actually knowing what happened. I feel like every angle will be told differently by how people’s brains are conditioned to react to certain circumstances like that one. The second hot spot I found was on page 102 and it said “War is hell, but that’s not half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.” What I got from that was that war is many things and it cannot be defined. There are too many emotions and factors that go into it to be able to truly describe or define it completely. There are so many conflicting terms and emotions in war and they can be complete opposites. Earlier in the book, the author said something about after a battle a soldier would get this feeling of joy and express extreme happiness for all kinds of life. I feel like he gets across the point that war is an emotional rollercoaster and it cannot be controlled. It made me think about how there is really no other experience like war that can cause somebody to experience so many extreme emotions so quickly. It makes me have a certain understanding for why some soldier can never be the same after war and gave me a very different view on war as a whole.