The Pit and Pendulum

The story starts with the narrator on trial and the reason is not told. The narrator falls asleep again and again and the images he sees after awaking are different. The candle appears and then disappears, which diminish the narrator’s hope. Afterwards, he awakes in darkness, finding his way by touching. When he wakes up into light, a razor sharp pendulum is getting closer and closer and there are rats. In addition, the pendulum somehow counts down the time he has left.

Poe describes the feeling of the narrator elaborately, which makes the readers have feeing of virtually being there. In my opinion, the descriptions of the environment and the narrator’s mind build the suspense throughout

The lottery

The village have a person die each year and they use the lottery to choose that person. In the beginning, the weather and the villagers seem harmless, which makes the reader feel easy, yet the children that playing around with stones seem cheerful. This makes a contrast with the end of the story, Mrs. Hutchinson would be hit by stones until she is dead.

Unlike big cities that have diversity of people, small towns usually have few dwellers, which will make people have strong bonds between each other. Therefore, traditions are inherited and will not be changed easily. Without regarding the reason and the origin of the tradition, people just follow the tradition. No one in the small town knows when the tradition begin and no one will doubt it. They are ignorant, following the tradition unquestioningly.

In our society, we also have a few traditions that followed by people without considering. For instance, people letting off firecrackers during Chinese New Year. According to a myth, there will be a monster coming down from mountains during the New Year, so people use firecrackers to threaten the monster. Additionally, they also let firecrackers for celebrating Chinese New Year. However, the loud noise from firecrackers always annoy citizens. There is no monster and celebration do not need to deal with firecracker. Some people even let them for fun. This tradition may also be reference by Shirley. If people think more, they will find out that letting firecrackers do nothing for New Year.