The Mysterious Short Story

In Humanities class today, we read a weird short story about a yearly lottery. But here's the weird part. Nobody wants to win it, because whatever the prize is, it doesn't seem to be very good. What was also weird was that a sticker was covering the title, we had no information about the author, and the end was missing. After reading the story (or at least the part we got, as in, everything except for the ending!) we had our own little lottery. The teacher pulled cards with our names on them out of black box (like in the story). Some of them had nothing special on them (like mine), others and a big black dot one theirs (like the dreaded black spot in the story). We were given our cards and were told not to open them until we got home. Very mysterious.....



When I got home, I opened the card and in it I found the rest of the story. It appears that if you pull the card with the black dot on it, the other villagers will throw stones at you. It may not sound so bad, but imagine this. You are completely surrounded by villagers, have no where to run, and they are all throwing stones at you. That would hurt, especially since rocks are ROCK HARD! In the card I also found some instructions. The instructions said "Go write something on your blog about the story and answer these questions". OK that not what it literally said but you get the picture.

1. If I had to title this story I would call it "The Lottery".
2. I thought that the winner would be killed, or at least that something bad would happen to them. I thought this because of the foreshadowing in the story, how everyone made such a big deal about it, how relieved the villagers were when they found out that their cards were blank, and how they reacted to how the loser/winner got the bad card.
3. I was quite mad when I didn't get to read the end in class, because I didn't understand what was going on, and got really curious about what was happening. Also I really wanted to know what was going to happen to the loser.
4. I was somewhat surprised that we were doing a lottery of our own, though I did sort of see it coming. I was happy to see mine didn't have have a black dot on it, especially since I saw them on some of the other cards. It probably doesn't matter as far as what was in the card, but I can't help but feel relieved. I suspected the end of the story would be in there (and I was right), and some instructions for an activity. There I was wrong. There were instruction for homework. I did follow the directions for the homework, as you can see. About waiting until I got home, well, you're just going to have to take my word for it.
5. The black box, and the black dot, did seem a little sinister. Probably because they were black. The blank/white card isn't black, but white. Most people feel that black is bad, and white is good. Not for a real specific reason, but they just do. I think that the same is going on with the black and blank items in the story. Black equals danger, while white equals safety.
6. After I read the story I felt bad for the victim. Her fate seemed rather painful. I mean a rock to the side of the head, with lots more rocks to come.... Not very nice, and definitely painful. I completely agreed with the victim when she said, it wasn't right.
7. My prediction was somewhat correct. I was right about the prize not being very good, and painful. I was wrong about what it would it be. I thought she would be killed, but she just got rocks thrown at her head.
8. I not sure if anything could have helped me make a better prediction.
9. The author probably left voids to confuse the reader, make them curious, and want to read on.
10. The fact that the story had no title and no author made it seem quite mysterious, The fact that there was no ending was just plain frustrating, because it had gotten me intrigued and I really wanted to know what would happen, and get a decent explanation. The foreshadowing got me intrigued, and curious. It also gave it a darker mood. The mystery paper, got me even more interested and curious. The delayed ending was a relief, because it was so much better than no ending. The end also calmed me down a little, because I my curiosity had finally been doused. There was one interesting thing I noticed, it did create tension for me, but in a different way from the rest of the things. I had noticed that in the end, they mention a person called Steve Adams. He wasn't being particularly nice to the victim, but hey, nobody was. Anyway, in another story I had read at school, "Shadow of the Minotaur", the antagonist's name happens to be Steve Adams. I was wondering whether or not there was a connection. I was wondering if perhaps the same person had written the stories. It probably isn't a great reason to suspect this. It could easily be a coincidence, but I can't help but ask myself whether or not it was the same author.