Anyway, I think I didn't find this story quite as disturbing because, although you were still left with the image of her dying, there wasn't as much of a sense of surprise and horror. I don't know how to describe what I mean! In 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' there is one murderer and a conversation where you learn about his past and one by one, he goes and kills the family. In this story, a whole group of people kills one person, and I find it less creepy because instead of being a crazy killer, it's a group of people who just feel obligated to kill.
When I read it, I felt terrible for the lady, picturing her being stoned by her friends and even her little son, but instead of feeling horrified of her death, I felt angry at the people who killed her. It's just that I wanted to tell them that they were being stupid and unfair and that if no one liked it then they shouldn't kill anyone. The author just doesn't put in anything to make you feel horrified. In 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find' you have a conversation between the killer and his victim about it, which makes it super creepy and unsettling, but in The Lottery' you aren't given that kind of information. You don't know that much about the woman who dies, you don't know much about the people who kill her, she doesn't include what it's like for someone to stone another person who they knew. Even though they have been doing this for years and years, I just don't feel like a person could kill another without the reader being able to see some hesitation or regret. They say they want to get it over quickly, but that only makes them seem more heartless. I guess I don't feel like the people are as realistic.
I think anyone could look at it and say 'This is great writing and it's very haunting," because I think the author is a good one, and it's extremely haunting to think that these people think it's the right thing to do, but I feel like there's more to it than that. Maybe if I had read this before the other short stories I would think differently, but it's very difficult not to compare them. One thing that might make one 'darker' than the other is that in one it starts out like a normal day. A family is going on a trip, but after that, everything spirals down. The other starts with a way too cheery day feel, and ends in a depressing way which for me, made them very different.
I'm trying to find a better way to phrase what I mean, but it's not going so well! One thing is that you feel like by the end of 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find' that it's hopeless and that she has to die, but you still find it creepy. In this one, instead of feeling the same hopelessness, you instead feel like it's the people's fault. They don't have to stone her, and it's their own major decision to kill this defenseless woman. It just doesn't make you feel unhappy in the same way the other story does. I also think that it might be because in 'The Lottery' they have a reason to kill her. I think that's part of it! It's not so unsettling to think they think they have a reason to stone someone to death, whereas to think some innocent woman is picked off of the street and stoned for no reason would, to me, be much more frightening.
With what I was saying with some of the people being 'unrealistic' it wasn't that they were fake characters, it just seemed like no one could actually do such a thing. What makes one scary and the other not might have to do with how realistic the whole idea is. Both stories obviously seem crazy and unsettling, but when I think about it, I feel like our car flipping over and being killed by a crazy person is more likely to happen then me living in a small village where people get stoned.
However much I have said it wasn't that dark, I think it was a hard comparison, because by itself, it does trouble me to think of someone creating such a story. To think that they are raising children to think this was right and that they must do it, is just scary. At the end, it says that someone gave her tiny son a few pebbles to throw, and I found that that was also a little scary for me. They are making someone do something without him knowing it is a bad thing to do or that he is killing the person who raised him. If such a tradition were to happen, it would be both terrifying and disastrous, every year. You would be taking someone who meant a lot to someone, and throwing them away, imagine how many kids would end up orphans! Which also confuses me because it seems like you might run out of people. I guess that might not actually happen.
For whatever reason, it was very easy to imagine this story. It might not have seemed real, but I could see all the characters when I read it. I ended up thinking about how the next generation might be able to stop it, or even the one after that, because when it says they don't know why it happens, it seems like the parents might secretly tell their children that one day they should stand up against it and stop such a terrible tradition. It also left me thinking, could I do that to a friend, a parent, a sibling? I just have this terrible image of a group of people throwing rocks at a tiny crying baby. How much would it break a mother's heart to see her tiny child die?
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