The Black Box, The Black Spot and The Blank Paper

I would title this story 'The Black Box, The Black Spot and The Blank Paper' because those three elements are very important in the story since the lottery (which appears a thousand times in the story) is all about these three main things. Also, these three main elements and not shown or told throughout the story, which created the main VOID for the readers.

As I read the story, I made a prediction that when something bad will happen to the person who gets picked in the lottery because everyone in the village seemed as though they wanted to get this over with and also get rid of it. They also thought that the one year went passed so quickly and if there is something good, you always feel as though time is so~ slow. 'Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more...'

When the end of the story was unknown, I felt as though my head was literally bursting with questions and tension to know more about the ending and what happened. There were questions in my head such as 'What will happen to Tessie?' 'What does the black dot mean?' 'Is this really the end of the story?' and etc. I was feeling very tense and desperate to find out what happens.

When I got the slip of paper and Mr. Housego told us that it contained the ending of the story, I was so tensed and curious why had to wait until 5 pm. For the whole day I couldn't forget thinking about the slip of paper. I also felt very relieved when I got the slip of paper and it didn't have a black dot, just in case it meant something bad. I followed the instructions and didn't open the slip until 5 pm because I was too scared that maybe if I don't follow the directions I might get myself into a huge mess.

I got so tensed as the story was reaching towards its climax and was so frustrated that I still had no clue of what the three elements meant; the black box, the black spot, the blank piece of paper. I knew the fact that all of them were very important, which made me go more wild since I didn't know how to put the story together. It felt like a huge empty space in the story that needed to be found in order to understand the story.

When I finally read the ending of the story, even though it was the 'end,' it still made me wonder for a little while about what exactly happened and if they actually stoned Tessie to DEATH. The author didn't really tell what happened to Tessie but he/she just showed it and the showing was done so well that I was terrified half to death.

My prediction was right about how I thought something bad was going to happen, but the ending was terribaly more horrifying than what I had imagined it to be. I thought they would just be seperated from their families, but they killed her! The ending was so horrifying that I can't forget it from my mind.

If the author had more repetition of the stones and gave more emphasis and impact on the children building up the pile of stones, I could have guessed that the lottery could do such terrible things to the villagers every year.

The author left so many VOIDS in the story because when authors leave one or more VOIDS in stories, the readers are going to read on and on into the story and get hooked in to find out what will happen next and how the story's going to end. The readers will also not forget about the story or even a book since they had so much tension while reading it.

In my opinion, there were two main powers of VOIDs in this story; No ending and Text clues and foreshadowing throughout. When there was no ending to the story, the reader was just left with thousands of questions of tension in their minds, which didn't allow them to realese since there were no answers given. Also, when the story kept repeating how bad a lottery was and about the black box, it really gave tension and curiosity as to know what happens in a lottery that is so terrifying.

This story was a great tale with so many strong powers of VOID that kept on making the readers desperate to read and know more.