The Family Man, by V. S. Pritchett

V. S. Pritchett at the Wikipedia: click here

The Family Man: analisis (text and audio)

Summaries of other Pritchett's stories: click here

PRESENTATION, by Rafel Martínez

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

This work, written by V.S. Pritchett, like all the other tales of him, are considered masterpieces that make their author to be considered as the best writer in England of the 20th century.

Like all his works, these are stories of normal people, with ordinary lives and that the author deals with that typical English irony, the well-known English humour. In most cases the actors are put in scenes that we all recognize as picturesque and that the author deals with his fine vision of double meaning and irony that the reader finds so funny.

In this case it is one story of a middle-class promiscuous man called William Cork with the pet name ‘Bunny’. He is a womanizer, a professor at a college, a married man with children, and a compulsive flute player. He has affairs with numerous women. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of his mistresses from the college, a jewellery designer called Berenice. In the story, Berenice comes face to face with Florence Cork, the obese wife of William. Mrs Cork has come across a letter sent to William in secret and she presumes Berenice is the sender.

The author fills with constant hints, especially sexual, the interpretation of his actors, with comic scenes such as when Bernice and Mrs Cork treat the theme of William's flute, one referring to her husband's musical instrument and the other, Bernice, understanding the flute's reference as William's penis, her lover.

ANALYSIS

I have to confess that it is my first approach to a work by V. S. Pritchett and when I chose the title The Family Man, at first I confused it with the American film, A Family Man, directed by Mark William, and with main actors, Gerard Butler, William Defoe, that is about a businessman who must choose between promoting himself running a large Chicago company or tending his family life.

After reading three times Pritchett's work, I have ended up understanding many phrases and its double meaning that are the characteristic of its author, where he mixes simple events of normal lives with his fine humour and typical English irony.

Now that I have known a work by Pritchett, I promise to look for and read other works, to confirm that in his genre he was the best author of his time.

QUESTIONS

William Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice Foster: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's flat
Benerice's father
What is a Quaker?
Sexual allusions in the story
Florence Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's talent for lying / telling the truth
Describe the affair between William and Benerice
When Benerice thinks about marriages going on holiday, she imagines "the legs of their children running across the sand". Why the legs?
Who was Rosie?
How does the relation between Benerice and Florence progress?
What does William usually do after making love with Benerice?
The necklace
Mrs Cork said: "Don't be jealous of Mrs Glowitz, dear. You'll get your turn." What's the double meaning of this sentence?
Can you tell the difference between "swoosh her hair" and "put it up"?

VOCABULARY

dawdle, piquancy, blob, droop, lurch, flourish, soft-soap, twaddle, flopped, rummage, harass, bicker, slapdash, hang-dog, wisp, dab (dabbing), pushy, talk somebody's head off

SOME NOTES ABOUT V. S. PRITCHETT

He had a terrible handwriting and his manuscripts were so full of corrections and blots that only his wife was capable to decipher his texts and type them. She used an Imperial typewriter, and she typed with such a speed and strength that it sounded exactly as a gun machine.

V. S Pritchett was born in 1900, so he used to say that he was as old as the century, or that the century was as old as he. He wanted to be called V.S.P. because he didn’t like his first name Victor. His mother would rather like a girl and she would name her after the queen Victoria, but, as he was a boy, he was called Victor.

When he was a child his family used to move house frequently, and he sometimes lived with his grandparents near York. His father never lasted long in a job and changed employment very often.

Pritchett couldn’t go to university (his family were poor) and he had to work in a leather company, but he could work for the firm as a clerk in Paris. However he wanted to be an artist. He started to paint because in 1921 Paris was full of artists. He did his first picture in two weeks, but when he looked at it he saw was a failure, so he abandoned his painting career after fifteen days. Then he decided to write, but one has to have something to write and he didn’t have anything to say. However, by chance, he had a lucky strike: there was a jokes contest in a newspaper; you had to write a joke and send it to the paper. His joke (it was a regular joke) was published and, although he didn’t get any money, he was very happy. Now he knew that if you don’t have anything to say, at least you can tell what others say, and he started his career as a writer.

To write well he thought he could imitate what writers did before him, and he discovered that some writers used to walk a lot, and so he walked very long walks. Also he read that Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) said the best thing to do to start writing was to write about small things or about things that are near you. Following this piece of advice he wrote about his room, send the text to the newspapers and... three newspapers accepted his articles. Now he could say he was a real author because he earned money with his texts.

He didn’t like to reread his articles or his stories because afterwards he found them very poor, and so he got very sad about his talent; but then he discovered that this was a common feeling in lots of writers: it’s the depression after the work is done. So some writers, as himself, get satisfaction in the act itself, and not after the text is deemed finished.

After Paris, in 1923 he travelled to Ireland (after obtaining the independence from Great Britain and in the middle of a civil war) and became a newspaper’s correspondent. There, in that country fond of beer and whiskey, he discovered that drinking alcohol don’t make you write better, but exactly the other way round, and he banned liquors forever when he wrote.

He wrote his first short stories in Ireland, where from an Irishman he got the inspiration for the short story Sense of Humour, and in Spain, about where he wrote a pair of books.

The Family Man was published in 1979 in his collection of short stories On the Edge of the Cliff.

The Cop and the Anthem, by O. Henry

O. Henry at the Wikipedia: click here

The Cop and the Anthem at the wikipedia: click here

The Cop and the Anthem: review

Some academic activities (with solutions): click here

The Cop and the Anthem: audiobook

The Cop and the Anthem: short movie

Presentation

Biography

Oliver Henry, usually written O. Henry, was the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter. He started to use different pseudonyms when wanted to publish his stories while he was in prison. And as he liked O. Henry the best, he kept using it ever after, and we always speak of him as O. Henry.

He was born in 1862, so in the middle of the American Civil War or Secession War, between the slavers confederates secessionists and the yankees abolitionists unionists. His birthday was on the 11th of September, so we have to suppose that if he had known what were to happen, he would have written a story about it, because he liked the surprising ironies of life.

He was born in North Carolina, but he went to live in Texas where he graduated as a chemist (or pharmacist, as he was American, not British). He was then 19 years old.

When he was 25, he eloped with his girlfriend. They married and they had two children, a boy who died soon after his birth, and, later, a girl, Margaret.

When he was 29, he started to work in a bank, and only 3 years later he was accused of misappropriation. In order to avoid the trial and being found guilty, he run away to Honduras. There he started a friendship with a famous train robber. Also, there he coined the expression “banana republic” that appeared in his book Cabbages and Kings.

But when he knew his wife coudn't come to Honduras (as they had planned) because she was dying of tuberculosis, he went back to the USA. He had spent six months in Honduras. Back in the USA, he was found guilty of misappropriation and got a penalty of 5 years in prison, but he went out after 3 years because of his good behaviour.

Then he moved to New York, the setting of most of his stories.

He died when he was only 48 years old of cirrhosis: as you can imagine, he was a heavy drinker.

While he lived in New York, he was a very prolific author because he wrote a story every week for different magazines. He was a popular author; his stories are witty, funny and with a surprising ending, but he wasn’t very praised by critics, because they thought he wasn’t deep enough.

His most known short stories are The Gift of the Magi (where a very poor marriage try to buy presents each other in secret), The Ransom of Great Chief (where two bandits kidnap a boy, and the things doesn’t go as easily as they thought), The Last Leaf (where and old artist helps, in a very special way, to spirit another young artist who doesn’t want to fight for her own life), Hearts and Hands (where a prisoner and his guard travel by train and there they find an old acquaintance), etc. 

The Cop and the Anthem

It was published in December 1904, and it’s a typical Henrian story. It has irony, witty sentences and an unexpected ending. Furthermore, it was adapted for the cinema (as a part of a longer movie) with Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe as stars.

It’s about a lazy homeless who feels winter is coming, and knows he’s going to be cold, and, as he lives in the streets, he has to look for warm accommodation. According to his opinion, the best he can get is some months in prison: there he will be fed and will have bed and blankets and a cell with a roof on it and walls around. But the question is how can be he put into prison? So he tries different ways, that is, different minor crimes, and waits for an officer to arrest him. But all of his attempts are a failure, so at the end he decides..., but I’m not going to be a spoiler telling you the end!

I like this kind of stories because they’re pure entertainment, and they are sincere and not pretentious. You read them, and you feel immediately satisfied and happy. But, on the other hand, they don’t make you meditate, they don’t give you new ideas and they don’t stimulate your intellectual or moral curiosity. All in all, however, they’re enjoyable.

QUESTIONS

In the story The Last Leaf, there is a personification: Pneumonia is treated like a person who walks around, touches people and kills them. What personification do we have in our story? Explain its elements.
Our protagonist, what cannot he do to get warm in winter that other (richer) people do?
What was Blackwell’s Island, or, simply, the Island?
What’s the Boreas in our story? What about the bluecoats?
How did Soapy protect himself from the cold the previous night?
Why doesn’t he like to go to a charity institution?
 
Explain the different ways to get arrested, and so an accommodation on the Island:

The expensive restaurant way
The breaking of a shop-window glass way
The regular restaurant way
The annoying a young woman way
The disorderly behaviour way
The umbrella way

 
What are the choosiest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm in the expensive restaurant?
What does it mean that “the minutest coin and himself were strangers”?
How does Soapy feel after hearing the church music?
At last, how did he get a place on the Island?

VOCABULARY

honk, hegira, parley, minion, loaf, telltale, woo, demeanour, cant, sud, larceny

The Last Mohican, by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud at the Wikipedia: click here

Pictures of Fidelman at the Wikipedia: click here

The Last Mohican: review

The Last Mohican: analisis

The Last Mohican: critical review

Presentation, by Gemma Agell

The writer

Bernard Malamud, a New Yorker, was born in Brooklyn in 1914 and died in Manhattan in 1986. He is one of the main representatives of the Jewish literature, although he was a declared agnostic. His parents were Russian immigrants. Malamud lived his adolescence during the Great Depression and watching Charlie Chaplin’s films to have some fun and explain them to his friends. He graduated at Columbia University where he did his thesis about Thomas Hardy. It seems it was an impulsive man since in 1948, he burned his first manuscript entitled The Light Sleeper. The topics he wrote about were social issues and above all the difficulties of immigrants who arrived in America, and the hope in reaching their dreams despite their poverty. He is not considered a prolific writer since he only wrote 8 novels. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards with the novel The Fixer where he talks about anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. He was also known for the 55 short stories collected and published after his death in the book Complete Stories. 

The story

The Last Mohican happens in Rome and has two men as protagonists. Fidelman is a middle-aged man who’s just arrived in Italy to spend a year to write a critical work about the painter and architect Giotto. He planned to stay in Rome for one week and then travel to Florence, Assisi and Padua, but this was completely disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious Jewish man. Their first meeting was when Fidelman was leaving the rail station, Susskind, keeps his eyes on him; Fidelman was good-looking and well-dressed, the perfect prey for Susskind who was looking for someone to finance their “street business”. He was a Jewish refugee from Israel who had lived in Germany and now was trying to survive in Rome cheating tourists. He offered Fidelman as a guide, to help him to find an hotel, in fact all of them were things to get some money. After this first meeting, the story tells us how a very organised man with a well-planned stay in Rome, changed completely when Susskind got into his life. In order to escape from this, Fidelman decided to go to Florence some days before expected, but his plans were broken when he arrived at the hotel room and his briefcase, and in addition the first chapter of the manuscript about Giotto, disappeared. From the beginning, he suspected of Susskind, and started a searching that supposed for him a decline, for during three months he quit the visits to the museums and got obsessed about find Susskind, even though he got up on weight and his physical aspect got worse. At the end of the story he finds Susskind but not his manuscript. 

Some things

Malamud starts with an accurate physical description of Fidelman and his outfit. It is important that the reader imagine a good-looking man but also emphasize with him, presenting him as a humble man who had worked hard to save money and even borrowed some from his sister in order to make his dream true, travel to Italy.

The reason that Fidelman decided to go to Italy was Giotto. Giotto di Bondone was a painter and architect born in Vicchio in 1267. Nowadays, we can contemplate his works at the Gallerie degli Uffici in Florence, Louvre Museum in Paris or the National Gallery in London. He contributed to the Italian Renaissance, and is known for representing emotions in paintings and also for incorporate 3-dimentional vision. By the incorporation of this changes it started a new way to express the religious art. He has remarkable paintings in churches of Assisi and Padua. The writer also wants to reflect that Fidelman is a curious person mentioning Trofimov as his alter ego: “Call me Trofimov” he said to Susskind. Trofimov was a role of the play The Cherry Orchard by Chekov where he express his ideas and represents an eternal student; Fidelman said “If there’s something to learn I want to learn it”.

The author describes the life that Fidelman dreamed at his arrival in Rome, a curious person who had planned his stay with a lot of activities: mornings at libraries searching for catalogues and archives, and after lunch and a nap to recover, he visited churches and museums during the afternoon. A perfect day for him finished with some relax, dinner with white wine and a stroll in Trastevere quarter near the Tiber. The role of Susskind is the stereotype of a person who takes profit on others, he asked for a suit, for money, and had not enough with some dollars he received from Fidelman. Susskind is a kind of survivor who lives illegally in Italy after quitting Germany; I’m not sure if he really wants to find a real job or prefers to live this way. When he begins to go after Fidelman, surely because he thinks that he is rich, he becomes almost his shadow, and Fidelman gives him some money in order “to have some peace of mind” as he said in the story. In my opinion, while the story goes on you empathize with Fidelman and his feelings to get rid of Susskind and really enjoy his stay in Rome, just until it became to an obsessive behaviour.

While reading the story you are someway transported there, he reflects the art present in Italy and especially in Rome, incorporating references of emblematic sites of the Eternal City: the Diocletian Baths, which afterwards were reconverted in a church and convent by Michelangelo. The Vatican, a paradise for art lovers, where Fidelman experienced some kind of “ecstasy” staring at its walls and absorbing all that beauty, and he also introduces a little reference to the statue of Romulo and Remus, the twins from the legend of Rome’s origin.

Malamud chose that the two main characters of the story were Jewish like him, although he was agnostic. The first time they met, Susskind calls Fidelman asking if he was Jewish, this was the link he found to explain him his own story as a refugee a connect with his solidarity.

The story had a change of direction when the briefcase with the manuscript disappears, Fidelman was another man, he didn’t enjoy any more his stay in Rome, and even he postponed his trip to Florence and the other cities. The next months he started to visit places just to find Susskind, because he suspected that he has stolen the briefcase, he didn’t answer his sister calls, his appearance was not important anymore, he put on weight. The search for Susskind had become an obsession.

The author added some irony in the narrative, mostly when he explains his dreams, for instance the one where he was in the cemetery reading the inscription; these situations always finished with the sentence: “But not Susskind”. This particular sense of humour was also used to represent in a visual way the freezing cold of the refugee’s room, he said: “this fish in the fishbowl is swimming around in Arctic Seas”. When he goes in Susskind apartment furtively and don’t find anything, he returned to the pension and had a dream where he found the briefcase, “but not the manuscript!”

Some Giotto's paintings

On the day before our departure, we decided to go as far afield as Padua where were to be found those Vices and Virtues of which Swann had given me reproductions; after walking in the glare of the sun across the garden of the Arena, I entered the Giotto chapel the entire ceiling of which and the background of the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant day has crossed the threshold with the human visitor, and has come in for a moment to stow away in the shade and coolness its pure sky, of a slightly deeper blue now that it is rid of the sun's gilding, as in those brief spells of respite that interrupt the finest days, when, without our having noticed any cloud, the sun having turned his gaze elsewhere for a moment, the azure, more exquisite still, grows deeper. In this sky, upon the blue-washed stone, angels were flying with so intense a celestial, or at least an infantile ardour, that they seemed to be birds of a peculiar species that had really existed, that must have figured in the natural history of biblical and Apostolic times, birds that never fail to fly before the saints when they walk abroad; there are always some to be seen fluttering above them, and as they are real creatures with a genuine power of flight, we see them soar upwards, describe curves, 'loop the loop' without the slightest difficulty, plunge towards the earth head downwards with the aid of wings which enable them to support themselves in positions that defy the law of gravitation, and they remind us far more of a variety of bird or of young pupils of Garros practising the vol-plané, than of the angels of the art of the Renaissance and later periods whose wings have become nothing more than emblems and whose attitude is generally the same as that of heavenly beings who are not winged. (Marcel Proust: La prisionnière)

Navicella

San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero.

TOPICS

Fidelman has a pigskin briefcase. What is the importance of this particular for the story?
What are “oxblood shoes”?
What do you know about the Diocletian Baths?
Fidelman: describe very briefly his appearance and his personality.
What is the meaning in context of “give a skeleton a couple of pounds”?
What do you know about Romulus and Remus legend?
There’s a film directed by Guy Richie (Madonna’s ex-husband) called “Lock, Stock and Two Barrels”. In the story we have the expression “lock, stock, barrel”; what does it mean? What is its origin? What is its relation with the title of the film? Have you seen it?
What is the meaning of “knickers”, in context?
Shimon Susskind: describe briefly his appearance and his personality.
What can you say about Florence, Siena, Assisi and Padua?
Who was Trofimov?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine?
There is the expression “remembrance of things unknown”. Doesn’t it remind you of a famous French literary work, a masterpiece? What’s its author and the exact title?
Fidelman said “My God, I’ve got to stop using my eyes so much” when he was looking at some ceiling. Why does he say it? What do you know about the Stendhal syndrome?
Why Susskind doesn’t go to Israel?
What is the context for the sentence: “The Italians are human people”?
What business does Susskind propose to Fidelman?
At the police station, an officer draws a line on “valore del manuscritto”. What is the meaning of this?
How did Fidelman try to recover the main ideas of his first chapter about Giotto?
Where did Fidelman look for Susskind and where did he find him?
What were Fidelman’s three different accommodations?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine after losing his work about Giotto?
They mention the Spanish painter Murillo. What do you know about him?
What was Fidelman’s real vocation?
Where did Susskind live?
What is the meaning of Fidelman’s last dream (“San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero”)?
Why did Susskind burn the chapter?
What did Fidelman earn at the end?
What is the relationship between the title and the story (remember there’s an adventures novel by James Fenimore Cooper called The Last of the Mohicans)?

VOCABULARY

shalom, schnorrer, Yiddish, constipated, mirthlessly, grant, porter (two meanings), cigar store Indian, welfare organization, gabardine, warped nerve, peddle, Joint Distribution Committee, gross, saddled, pest, Sephardim, faucet, pudgy, ghetto, goyim, painstakingly

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery: study guide

The Lottery: audiobook

The Lottery: review

The Lottery, short movie:

Presentation, by Remedios Benéitez

Biography

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California, in 1916, and spent her childhood in Burlingame, California, when she began writing poetry and short stories as a young teenager. Her family moved east when she was seventeen, and she attended the University of Rochester, New York.

She entered Syracuse University, N.Y., in 1937, where she met her future husband, the young aspiring literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Both graduated in 1940 and moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, where Shirley wrote without fail every day. She began having her stories published in The New Republic and The New Yorker.

In 1945 her husband was offered a teaching position at Bennington College, and they moved into an old house in North Bennington, Vermont, where Shirley continued her daily writing while raising children and running the house.

Her first novel The Road Through the Wall was published in1948, the same year that The New Yorker published her iconic story The Lottery.

She composed six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs and more than 200 short stories.

She was a heavy smoker and suffered numerous health problems. In 1965, Shirley died in her sleep at her home in North Bennington, at the age of 48.

THE LOTTERY

It is a short story by Shirley Jackson published in the magazine The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. Reaction to the post from readers was negative, who sent protest messages to the magazine, but later it was accepted as a classic short story subject to interpretations. Now it’s considered as “one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature”. It has been adapted for radio, theatre and television.

 Argument:

The lottery takes place on a beautiful summer day, June 27, in a small town of 300 inhabitants, where all residents gather for a traditional annual lottery.

Although the event seems festive at first, people show a strange and gloomy mood, and it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery.

The draw is carried out between the heads of the family. The Hutchinsons are chosen and then the draw is made within the chosen family, getting chosen Tessie (the mother), so she is stoned to death by all the neighbours of the town, including his own family. This is a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, according to the beliefs of the community.

I think that this is a story about the human capacity for violence. It explores ideas such as communal violence, individual vulnerability and the dangers of blindly following traditions.

We rely on collective violence in those circumstances that we would not be able to consider individually.

ISSUES

The quid of the story is that the people seem normal, nice and even happy, and they go to the square as they would go to the market, with an informal attitude, they chatter and gossip; even the day is sunny, the children don’t have school because they start the summer holidays and the procedures of the lottery are simple and common. So the jewel of the story is the ending; we don’t imagine that something horrifying is going to happen. The villagers aren’t afraid, although we suspect that something surprising can happen, because there’s too much happiness, and we have had some hints, e.g., they collect stones, there is somebody missing, Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”, etc. So in this case we have a story that loses all its effect when we know the end; the story has a punch, but as soon as we know that it’s going to hit us at the end, we are alert and don’t get hurt (symbolically) any more. A similar classical and very famous story of this kind is Monkey’s Paw, by W.W. Jacobs. I strongly recommend its reading if you like these kind of stories: it’s short and easy to read with a lot of dialogue.
👉So, what kind of stories do you prefer: the ones with a clear ending or the ones without?

I think the main topic of the story is tradition, what we do with tradition. According to the dictionary “tradition is a custom or way of behaving that has continued for a long time in a group of people”, but, for me, another definition is also possible: tradition is what you do because someone before you did, not because it’s reasonable to do. So you don’t think about the action and its consequences, you don’t think about the reason why. Accordingly, tradition is opposite to progress.What is your point of view about traditions? Do you remember the tradition in Julian Barnes’s story, that one about sleeping on a mattress in a barn on the wedding night? And I particularly remember the tradition of burying the mother’s placenta when there is a birth (as someone in my family told me).
👉Can you tell us a very unreasonable tradition you know? 

Something similar happens with proverbs and sayings. A typical case of a saying that can be false is “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't”. And in the story there is also a saying: “Lottery in June / corn be heavy soon.”
👉Are all sayings clichés? Can you explain a saying that isn’t exactly true? I give you some examples:

The pen is mightier than the sword.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
 Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
You are what you eat.
A watched pot never boils.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Time heals all wounds.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Slow and steady wins the race.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Love is blind.
You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

 

...

In the story, the tradition has lost some parts of the ritual, or some things have been changed, e.g., using papers instead of pieces of wood for the draw. Do you think that this is because traditions tend to keep the essential parts and forget the less important ones?
👉What is your opinion about rituals? Are they necessary for our everyday lives? And are they useful for ceremonies, social situations as a wedding or a funeral?

The story is situated in a small village of 300 inhabitants.
The smaller the society the stronger and less sound are the traditions?
👉What is your view on this?

Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”. Why? Because she thinks something in the procedure wasn’t correct, or because she knows she’s going to be stoned?
👉In which societies they did lapidation and in which countries they're still doing now?

So being lucky is another important theme in our narration. There’s a wonderful story about the fortune (in the classical or Greek sense) or the destiny ruling our lives: La loteria en Babilonia by Jorge Luis Borges. In the Æneid, they say: Fortune helps audacious people, that is, “chance is something you don’t have: that’s something you must look for”. Or: you cannot wait your chance sitting down, you have to stand up and go for it.
👉In your opinion, do our lives depend most on luck or most on our personal decisions?

Another topic you can find in The Lottery is the question of the scapegoat; that means that, when there are catastrophes or phenomena you aren’t able to explain, you attribute them to some sin or bad action someone has done, and so this person has to pay for it, and, if you don’t know the guilty one, you’ll have to choose someone (using a lottery, e.g.) to pay for it. That will stop new disasters. Religion explains this as a sacrifice: you have to do a sacrifice to soothe the gods, and that means killing an animal or a person. You already know the legend of Saint George and the Dragon: every year they had to choose a maiden to feed the Dragon.
👉Can you remember other examples of scapegoats?