"The Lottery" & " The Perils Of Indifference"

The Lottery and The Perils Of Indifference are prime examples of ordinary, everyday citizens demonstrating terrible violence amongst each other. In the lottery the entire town of 300 gather to stone one of their own to death. In this case the towns people don't view themselves as being violent its just carrying on their tradition. From an outside view these people appear to be murderers and their actions are unjust. During the short story " The Lottery" Mr. Hutchinson draws the mark paper sentencing one of his family members to death. " Shut up Tessi" Bill Hutchinson shouts to his wife when she tries to argue her way out of the annual stoning. This quote show how Mr. Hutchinson understands that this is a tradition and that it must to continue even at the extent of one family member. " Be a good sport Tessie" is a comment from the crowd telling Mrs Hutchinson to accept the fact that one of her loved ones will be brutally beaten to death. " I hope it's not Nancy," whispered a girl in the crowd wishing that one of her friends will still be around to play tomorrow. " All right folks," "Let's finish quickly." said Mr Summers talking about the stoning like it was an errand. It's mindboggeling to think that these people rid themselves of a peer every year like a daily choir. Minutes after preforming a murder the village goes back to normal like its no big deal. The mailman delivers mail, the welders weld and the farmers farm. These are just ordinary people who once a year act out against an unfortunate soul not realizing that anything is wrong.



The speech " The Perils Of Indifference" is written by a survivor of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a similar situation to the lottery in the sense that the people acting in a violent and inhumane manner believe what they are doing is right. These are just ordinary people who had been brainwashed by the government to believe that the Jewish people don't belong. Suddenly people who used to befriend , live amongst and even worked together are turned against one another because the government says so.