Void questions and answers

7) Were your predictions correct? How did you feel about that?

No, my predictions were not correct, but they were fairly close, considering that every one of my secondary predictions had something to do with hurting, dying, rocks being thrown etc. I feel that my predictions were the correct thing to predict because others in the class predicted the same. Though at first I thought that it was going to be the man or one of their children, I think it is a logical solution that she herself was stoned because she was the one complaining and not agreeing with the rules of the lottery, that had been there previously for a long time.

4) How did you feel when you were handed the mystery paper? What did you think was in it? Did you follow the instructions? Why/why not?

I felt that this was intentional to make a void in the story and so that one would not want to follow the instructions of the paper and immediately open the paper. I thought that the end of the story was going to be inside the paper, and at that I was correct, though I did not know what the end of the story was. I actually tried to follow the instructions and I forgot about the paper until I saw that the time was 5:00, at which time I opened the paper to discover the end of the much awaited story. I followed instructions to make the end of the story more exciting, or at least when I opened the paper, and to make a void, leaving me wondering what was inside that whole time.

1) What would you call this story? Why?

I would call this story "Lucky Irony", because it involves the lottery, but in a bad way, and the whole time one woman is bickering about the lottery while in the end she "wins" and is stoned, to keep the village's population smaller. Though being chosen to be stoned might be the opposite of lucky, that is another reason for it to be ironic because only one in 300 is chosen, involving much luck, as is in money lotteries, but you are chosen in a bad way, so it's "lucky", but ironic

10) Explain the power of the void in this experience.
C. Text clues and foreshadowing throughout

The continuous text word clues throughout the story hint towards the luck of the woman, because in several occasions the word "lottery" appears, however the silence in the lottery crowd also foreshadows that the "lottery" isn't a good thing to win, but rather an annual stoning instead of someone winning money.

6) How did you feel when you read the end of the story? Explain.

I knew that something bad was going to happen so I did not feel all to excited, but I did have a sense of wondering and really wanted to open the paper, but instead I followed it's instructions. It was not so much that I wanted to know what the end of the story was, seeing as I already knew that, but more that I wanted to see it written on the paper to confirm my predictions and knowledge of the story.