Not so Lucky

“This is a short response about the themes in the story The Lottery; I will be supporting my evidence with text evidence.”

The story The Lottery is about where a town has a lottery, but instead of winning money they play with the fate of people’s lives. One example of theme in this story happens to be tradition, because throughout the story they talk about how this has been a tradition for their town for 100’s of years. Even one of the men participating, who also happens to be the oldest man in the town, says that he has done this town’s annual lottery for 27 years. Plus if this was not tradition to this town they would hopefully think it is inhuman to kill a person with rocks, but the reason why it isn’t inhuman to them is because it is a tradition to the town folk. Another odd thing that helps back up this tradition theme is that the friends of the woman, who is killed, pick up the biggest stones at her so she can die quick and less painful.

Another theme that stands out in this story happens to be death, because this entire town is revolved around this lottery that ends up killing someone in the end. The theme death is not in the beginning of the story because it starts out all innocent, like something you see in the movie, but then it slowly starts to go downhill from the moment the story begins. Those are the two main themes that stick out the most in the story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

The Crack In The Mirror

       As I sit upon an old mirror in a small compound in Pakistan, I gain dust more and more each day. No one really knows my story, it may be an odd one but people should know how I became a crack on a mirror. The year was 2011, as the new mirror sat above an old wooden dresser. A man, an evil man named Osama Bin Laden was brushing his long black beard in the mirror, when all of sudden the door came crashing down. 20 U.S. Navy Seals came running in guns drawn, shouting on the top of their lungs to give up. Then all of sudden there were multiple loud bangs and that’s all I can remember. That’s when I was created, a crack on a mirror made from a stray bullet. And that is the story of how I became a crack in a mirror.

What People will do to Survive

“This is an expository piece on the theme “Will to Survive” on the book’s Zach’s Lie and Jack’s Run by Roland Smith. I will talk about how the theme fits into both books and how it fits into the series.”

In the Zach’s Lie series, Jack Osborne (Zack) and his family are endangered by a drug cartel after their father is arrested for helping the drug cartel smuggle drugs into other countries by plane. The drug cartels leader Alonzo thinks Jack’s father knows too much and he is a danger to his business. Many people wouldn’t be scared, but the Osborne’s were and they would go to any measure to keep their family safe. Many people will do extreme things to survive even going to different places or even changing their identity to live a peaceful life, living a good life could be the most important thing to a human being.  The will to survive is in all of us, we will have to use our survival techniques sometime in our lives.

Even though there are two books in the series they both have the same theme. In Zach’s Lie this is where the real story begins, Zach and his family find out the hard way that his father has been doing dangerous life threatening work. The real theme starts to kick in when their family is put into witness family protection, which is just one of the few things they have done to survive this whole situation. They had to change their names, their hair colors, their eye colors, and even their lifestyles. The Osborne’s went from riches to rags, they had to become poorer and move to some random town in Nevada to survive which is another reason that proves the theme in book one. Also when Zach meets this girl he likes named Caitlin, he can’t tell her anything about what happened because he needs to survive and he does not want the bad guys to find him or his family. Those are just a few of the main points that make the theme “Will to Survive”.

In the second book Jack’s Run, there are a few examples of this theme in this second book. One type is quite similar to the first book and it is they had to move to another town, and change everything using witness protection again because Alonzo and his men found where they were before. Also more between the middle and end of the story Zach and his sister get captured by Alonzo’s brother, they have to use their minds in places they never have before. That is another piece symbolism of the theme of “Will to Survive”, also Zach even shot this one woman because she was going to kill him if he didn’t do anything to protect himself. Those are a few examples of the theme in the second book Jack’s Run.

In the end Zach and his family had to use their sense of survival to survive. Generally people wouldn’t believe that two books have the same theme, but these too books do. They both fit nicely into the theme “Will to survive” because in both books they are trying to survive and they would end up doing anything to stay alive. Both stories have their own ways of this theme, but there is some that are similar in both. The main reasons why they are the same is that in both books they are constantly in hiding from the cartels, and they can’t tell people who they really are so they can survive. Many things are the same in the series but they both have their own unique type of example for “Will to survive”.

John Brown's Raid

Who Was John Brown?

John Brown (1800-1859) was an American Abolishment, which meant he did not like slavery and he wanted to get rid of it. He did not believe in it what so ever, He believed that Christians should treat people the same no matter what color their skin was. Also John believed that it was acceptable to use violence to end slavery. Brown was a man of many children; he had around 20 children which all believed in the same thing he believed in. John grew up in Spring Field Massachusetts, before moving into the Kansas Territory. 

The Raid

In 1859, John Brown and his 5 sons were so fed up with the slavery that John decided that he was going to pull an attack on Harpers Ferry in Virginia. Harpers Ferry had a large Federal Arsenal of weapons, because he was going to get the weapons to the slaves so they could attack and kill their masters so they could be free at last. John thought his plan would work perfectly, he thought him, his sons, and a few other black men would ambush the arsenal, killing the guards/soldiers, taking the weapons and giving them to the slaves. But the thing John did not know, was that most of all the slaves he invited would not show up, causing them to be over powered by the Confederates. Brown was captured when all of his sons were shot and killed, and he was hung on December 2, 1859.

Why was this important the Civil War?

There are many people who believed that this is actually what started the Civil War, because people believed that he had such a strike on the states. There was never such a violent abolishment attack before this raid, which is what shocked the Confederates. This is why this was a very large cause for the start of the civil war.