Writing Log 3B Hotspots

The Lottery-

When reading The Lottery, I came across my first hotspot on page 57. “Thought my old man was out back stacking wood, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and cam a-running.” Mrs. Hutchinson was running late to the lottery because this horrific event was something that she didn’t want to have to think about. It was a little disturbing to me, that when drawling the paper slips out of the little black box, the leader was hesitant to let a woman grab the slip of paper. I feel as though, this town is stuck in the past and they are unwilling to change. When the other town people were talking about the other towns doing away with the lottery, the leader of their town was calling those people stupid. This town has many rituals that they are used to doing and some people want to do away with the rituals because they agree that times are changing and nothing is quiet how it used to be anymore. This hotspot made me think about the past, when the woman had to do everything around the house because that is what they were supposed to do. When Mrs. Hutchinson got to the town meeting, where the lottery was held, she said to her husband, “you wouldn’t want me leaving those dishes dirty in the sink, now would you?” this all goes back to the past times. People need to learn to move on and accept the fact that the world is changing. People can continue to do the rituals that their ancestors used to do, but maybe not to the same extent.

My second hotspot that I came across in this story was on page 62. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.” In this town, there is a lottery that goes on every twenty-seventh. The lottery in this town is where everyone grabs a slip of paper out of a black box, and the person who has a black dot on their paper, gets killed. To me this isn’t right at all because times have changed. This town is mostly worried about over populating, so they have this lottery every month, where they kill off one person each month. They feel as though, by killing off one person, they will save their community. To me this whole lottery thing is absurd because to kill a family member or a friend is just wrong to do. Think if we had this lottery in our society and how hard it would be to lose a friend or family member each month. Throughout the story, some of the women were saying how they feel like they just got over the last lottery the previous week. Having to deal with all the stress of losing someone is a really hard thing to do. This hotspot made me feel disgusted because the fact that the people living in this town accepted that they had to kill a loved one or family member each month, is sad. I am glad, that in this day in age we don’t have to kill off a member of our society, in order to survive or keep up with the ancestral rituals.

How to Tell a True War Story-

When reading this story, my first hotspot was on page 96. “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” I feel as though this is true with any horrific story because we are all in denial of what we had just witnessed. When people are telling stories about how someone died, we tend to believe that the story isn’t exactly true, how they are telling it. When people go into great detail we get drawn in and feel as though it is just another story, but for the people who are telling the story, it is surreal and sad because they are thinking about that one time in life, when they had it the hardest. When reading this story, this hotspot made me think of when my cousin Lanissa committed suicide, and the cops came to my door with a picture of her hanging, asking me if this was my cousin. It all seemed to be fake and a sick joke, but in all reality I had just lost someone who was my dance partner, and my family member who I loved very much.

My second hotspot is on page 106. “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war.” I thought that this hotspot was special because this is true. When people come home from the war, they never want to talk about the horrific things that happened to them because when they come home, they are usually traumatized by these events. People tend to tell stories about the love and sunlight that they saw. This sunlight reminds them that there is hope and everything is going to be okay. I feel bad for the people who are off at war because they deal with the things people would never even dream of having to deal with. Seeing people die every day, killing people, surviving day by day wondering if their turn to die will be next.