One of my favorite short stories is "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. It's a creepy little tale about a rural village's method of keeping prosperous. I teach it to my classes and show them a clip of the made-for-television version, and they generally enjoy it.
Last year, I discovered a little assignment that I thought was pretty cool. So much so that I did the assignment along with the kids. It's called a "found poem." The original assignment had students using a newspaper, but I thought using a short story would be more interesting.
What you do is pull out words and phrases from the story. You then arrange the phrases to create a poem. Here is the one I wrote:
"Lottery in June, Corn Be Heavy Soon"
There's always been a lottery
Don't be nervous
Black wooden box
Slips of paper
Heads of households
"We better get this over with."
Humorlessly and nervously--
a hesitation--
a slip of paper
folded in your hand
There's always been a lottery
Don't be nervous
Slips of paper
Heads of households
The black spot
The sound of the whisper,
"Who's got it?"
"We better get this over with."
Blowing scraps of paper.
It wasn't fair.
The crowd of villagers.
It wasn't fair.
A great pile of stones.
It wasn't fair!
"We better get this over with."
The crowd of villagers
The children had stones
hands out desperately
the sound of the whisper
it wasn't fair
the villagers moved in
a stone hit
There's always been a lottery
Don't be nervous
I had just read this for the first time last week. It was featured in my latest Mental Floss magazine. You did great with the poem! You still managed to capture the tension that begins to creep you out as you approach the end. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThis story has haunted me my whole life! This story, along with the 70s series (and movie) "Logan's Run" and the novel "Lord of the Flies" blurred critical lines for me - mostly the line between human and animal and the line between what will be tolerated by 'civilized' society and what will not. Those are lines we tend prefer to be more distinct!
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