For Friday: Saki, “Sredni Vashtar” and Jackson, “The Lottery”



Group “B” should answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Besides the fact that someone is killed in each story, what makes them uncanny or disturbing? How can stories without monsters, ghosts, or aliens be a “horror” story? OR, is this the same kind of story even without those elements?

Q2: Why does Conradin make the ferret his deity, and why does he give it such a strange, imposing name? Why, for example, didn’t he make the hen his god?

Q3: In “The Lottery,” we get the sense that most people don’t know why the lottery exists or exactly where it came from. There’s even a sense of impatience about it: “Well now…guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work” (176). Do we understand why they keep doing it, especially when a few other towns have stopped altogether? Why is it so important?

Q4: How can we read both stories (or one particular story) as a satire of early 20th century society? What ideas or values are they satirizing, and how are we supposed to see this through the events and characters of the stories?



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