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Summary: Don't read 'The Lottery' as your first story
Review: I made the mistake of reading 'The Lottery' as the first story. No other stories in the book came close! Wish they could all have that "Twilight Zone" feel ...
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Summary: Jackson captures the scary side of humanity
Review: This story, showing humans that still practice human sacrifice, also reveals the true nature of humanity itself by showing that we are blind sheep. This HORROR story is so unnerving that you will think about it for days! You will never look at your neighbor the same
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Summary: This story shows true humanity.
Review: I loved this story because it shows how we often blindly follow what we do not know how to stop. It is easier to just "go along with it" than to stand up and take responsibility. I think most think of this as horror because it tells the TRUTH about our race. How sad, right? So, my thought is that Jackson hit it right on the head, and did it in such a literary way. I LOVE this story.
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Summary: Very surprising ending!
Review: The text leads you to believe that the lottery is a large harmless social event that the community is involved in. Old Man Warner speaks of the great tradition for over 77 years that he had participated in the lottery. With the children involved, it was shocking to find out what the town was drawing for! The sudden grotesque ending gave meaning and life to the book. Very well written.
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Summary: It was mostly about a town that couldn't accept changes.
Review: This book was about a tradition to many towns. Every year, the whole town would gather around and draw a slip of paper (it used to be bark) from a black wooden box. If your paper had the dot on it, you got another slip of paper for each member of your family. Then, whichever member had the dot, got pegged with stones and big rocks from everyone else in the town. It was a sacrifice. Many of the people in the town wanted to stop the tradition but, others thought that that was a bad idea. They still had the original wooden box from the very first lottery that had ever taken place. The only change from the first lottery was that now, the dot was found on a slip of paper and not bark. The lottery had been going on for over seventy-six years. I really didn't like the way that the book ended. It left me with very many questions and I thought that there should have been another chapter to answer my questions. I would only recomend this book if you were the kind that wanted to go back into previous chapters
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Summary: Most shocking story out there!
Review: This is my favorite book. The Lottery is a twisted way of thinking that could happen. When I first read the Lottery I was shocked. I thought that this could never happen in our world today. But after a reading in the newspaper of worse things towns do I thought that it could happen. Everyone was sad that they might get picked as the winner. But once the winner is picked, they are all relived and turn into crazed people casting stones at their once friend. It could have been them. Nobody stops to think that it could have been them. It could be them the next session
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Summary: makes an impression
Review: "The Lottery" by Shirly Jackson certainly makes a strong impression. It is a distubing tale of the dark side of human nature. I guarantee that once read, this story is not forgotten. I wouldn't recommend it for young children, but definately for more mature readers. It is a must read.
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Summary: Buy it for "The Lottery," fall in love with the rest as well
Review: If you've never read "The Lottery," you're wasting valuable time reading this review. Go buy the book and read it instead. If you have read "The Lottery," then odds are you already appreciate this dark, brilliant, horrific little story. It's one of the greatest horror stories ever written, and it's one of my favorites of all time to teach, as well. My students were all shocked and horrified by the story (not least by the fact that I would give them something that so offended them), but by the end of the semester, they came to love the story. The set-up is brilliant, and the twist ending is perfect: brutal, shocking, and short. Other reviewers have commented on the story's excellence for teaching things like the evil of tradition; it's also an excellent way to teach how ordinary people could become involved in something like the Nazi death camps.The rest of the stories in the collection are uniformly excellent, as well, although I would recommend saving "The Lottery" for last. It's by far the most horrific in the collection, but Jackson's satire can be just as brutal as her horror, and there is more than a little of the horror of everyday life sprinkled throughout the rest of these tales. A must-buy!
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Summary: A little disappointing
Review: I read several reviews on The Lottery and Other Stories, and I decided to purchase the book. However, I must say that I was disappointed after reading several of the stories. While some of them are rather interesting, many of them left me lost and confused. There were dramatic buildups that would cause me to anticipate the ending, but the stories would end there--without any sort of resolution.
I had read The Lottery in high school and though it was quite fascinating, but many of the remaining stories in the collection do not live up to the expectations that were generated by reading the title piece.
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Summary: Poison pills
Review: Like other students before me, the only thing by Shirley Jackson I had read was "The Lottery.", which has those virtues that high school teachers love: it has an obvious moral theme, and it is fairly short. I liked it then, and I like it now, but I liked the other stories in this collection more. Jackson had a tremendous eye for realism, and the way in which prejudice sneaks into virtually every human interaction. "After you, My Dear Alphonse," is excellent, about the frustration and anger which arises when we are unable to exercise our virtues easily upon others. Some of these stories touch on social realities that still go largely unmentioned. Nor will you ever meet anyone named James Harris again without a slight twinge of excitement and caution.
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