Letter from Mrs. Hutchinson to The Council of the Village:I am writing to you about the lottery which we hold every year.
In this lotterywhich a person is chosen at random and is stoned to death. I understand that you believethat since it has been tradition for so long and therefore, it is okay. It has been going onfor as long as I can remember. This method has been around since the time when Jesuswalked the earth. We see it in all kinds of stories in the Bible.
We definitely have topick somebody in the village for the lottery. We have to have s person that we know orthe crops might go bad. The idea of a lottery makes it fair for all those who participate. This way there is no one person that is singled out of the group. It also brings a sense offamily values, at least in my family. With all everyone in my family being so busy it isvery rare that all the members of my family are together for any reason of the lottery.
Itis amazing the way that all the families come together in anticipation. In this right, italso gives our village a sense of community and brings us closer together. Everybodyknows everybody and the lottery draws us yet closer together. It is very rare to see awhole community come together and I am glad to be part of one that does. Leadership isa quality the men in out village have.
The reason they have this quality is due to the mentaking charge and picking for their families in the lottery. If the did not pick somethingcould go wrong with the crops. Once the whole lottery is all over the crops will be betteroff according to the superstition. This helps the village from running out of food, and Ido not want to see my family starving to death.
Though it is a tradition that has been around for ages, the lottery is just not right. I find it to be quite immoral. By killing mothers and fathers of children, or even worsetaking children from their parents in such a horrible way, hurts those that are affected. This breaks up families and hurts all of those in the family that is chosen. If the husbandor father of a family is selected, the family is going to be hurt very badly financially.
Think of all of your loved ones. The idea of losing a family member to an illness is hardenough, but losing a family member to something that can be totally prevented wouldhurt worse. Other towns in the area have stopped the lottery. The crops in the othertowns have been larger than ours since they have stopped their lotteries. It has been thisway because they had more people to do the harvesting.
The lottery is out of date and notmeant for todays society. Stoning people to death was frowned upon in the past and Ibelieve it should still be that way. Killing people this way also breeds violence in ourcommunity. Children collecting rocks in the town square in anticipation of being the oneto give the fatal blow to the unlucky person drawn.
Guarding their piles of rocks so thatthey can be the person to throw the most stones. This is so scary to think of innocentchildren being so cruel. This method of population control just plain hurts. Stoningpeople to death is cruel and unusual punishment. I believe that compromise is vital to the health of the community. Death is anextremely drastic measure of population control.
There are other options that I wouldlike to bring to the attention of the council. Instead of a person being killed I believe thathe or she could become an outcast for a year or so. This way the person is out of thetown and is no longer overpopulating our community, or we could have the family whichdraws the black dot to move away. This will give more room for other families to movein, or even more land for farming.
We could even come up with a brand new tradition. The council in office can go down in history for being the council that came up with anew tradition .
