Regardless of a reader’s time in reading The Lottery I believe it will leave the reading with many speculations of the meaning of the story and whether any of it actually took place. That is where the readers went wrong in their interpretation of the story and wanted to know where such lotteries take place and if they could watch. I believe those readers took a literal interpretation of her story thinking that a person in their right mind could not fabricate such a chilling tale without any contribution from actual events.
In the late 1940’s the world witnessed World War II and the atrocities of the holocaust and that there are people who are capable of something as barbaric as holding a lottery on who they will stone to death. During those times I believe were being awakened that anything is possible. From the events of World War II to headlines of murders like the Black Dahlia case, I believe that people could accept to believe an actual village that practiced the lottery system of the story existed. If JB White could address those people, I would think he would point out their wrong interpretations of the story. That just like Posner, they were failing to realize their experience with the story. The people who were offended by the story assumed that the events were real or that the writer had intentions to antagonize or disturb the pleasantries of American culture. Sometimes people just need to let stories simply be stories and not focus so much on the intent of the author but on the “power of language” as White suggested.
Although Jackson didn’t seem to have a main theme for the story, my experience with the story was that people conform to the norm as much as possible until it affects them personally. Just like Tessie Hutchinson we get on with our business and our everyday routine and we forget the events that might be important or significant to other people or the public in general until it affects us. When Tessie came to the gathering, she was...