The Perils of the Lottery...

You are facing a crowd with anxious eyes. You see your neighbour, the mail man, your husband, all staring at you hungrily. They have stones placed in the fists of their hands and the first pebble is thrown at the side of your head. Your heart rate accelerates and the only sound you hear is of yourself screaming, "It isn't fair, it isn't right[!]" This is the exact event of what took place in the short story, "The Lottery". All this "took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time... for noon dinner." Seemingly normal and average citizens in a small town commit a brutal act of violence as everyone in the town draws a piece of paper on June 27th and then stones the "lucky" winner to death. Mrs. Delacroix, a nice and polite housewife, even "[selects] a stone so large she [has] to pick it up with both hands..." Small children even hold pebbles in their hands, ready to kill a woman they would have passed dozens of times at the grocery store. These normal, ordinary and educated citizens commit a violent and horrific crime in which they believe is as normal and ordinary as they are.



In a similar literary piece of work, "The Perils of Indifference" Elie Wiesel describes the injustices and horrors he was faced with as a child. His entire family was tortured and killed by the Nazis and he was the only one to survive. Concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and Auschwitz, Germany all create terrifying memories for this author and he describes the pain and anguish he felt. What is even more appalling however, are the acts of the "ordinary" and "average" citizens of the world. The highly disappointing tale of the St. Louis was a shameful act on the United States as a boat with "maybe 1000 Jews was turned back to Nazi Germany." And yet, although the Pentagon and the State Department knew of the these hate crimes they continued to turn a blind eye towards it. "It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources." America, a great country of great citizens who are the definition of "normal" with regular lives and families, just stood back and allowed for these injustices to exist. Indifference "is not only a sin, it is a punishment" and will continue to happen if the world does not recognize it.