Rogerian Argument For The Lottery Essay, Research Paper

Letter from Mrs. Hutchinson to The Council of the Village:

Rogerian Paper

To the Village Council,

I am writing to you about the lottery which we hold every year. In this lottery

which a person is chosen at random and is stoned to death. I understand that you believe

that since it has been tradition for so long and therefore, it is okay. It has been going on

for as long as I can remember. This method has been around since the time when Jesus

walked the earth. We see it in all kinds of stories in the Bible. We definitely have to

pick somebody in the village for the lottery. We have to have s person that we know or

the crops might go bad. The idea of a lottery makes it fair for all those who participate.

This way there is no one person that is singled out of the group. It also brings a sense of

?family values?, at least in my family. With all everyone in my family being so busy it is

very rare that all the members of my family are together for any reason of the lottery. It

is amazing the way that all the families come together in anticipation. In this right, it

also gives our village a sense of community and brings us closer together. Everybody

knows everybody and the lottery draws us yet closer together. It is very rare to see a

whole community come together and I am glad to be part of one that does. Leadership is

a quality the men in out village have. The reason they have this quality is due to the men

taking charge and picking for their families in the lottery. If the did not pick something

could go wrong with the crops. Once the whole lottery is all over the crops will be better

off according to the superstition. This helps the village from running out of food, and I

do not want to see my family starving to death.

Though it is a tradition that has been around for ages, the lottery is just not right.

I find it to be quite immoral. By killing mothers and fathers of children, or even worse

taking children from their parents in such a horrible way, hurts those that are affected.

This breaks up families and hurts all of those in the family that is chosen. If the husband

or father of a family is selected, the family is going to be hurt very badly financially.

Think of all of your loved ones. The idea of losing a family member to an illness is hard

enough, but losing a family member to something that can be totally prevented would

hurt worse. Other towns in the area have stopped the lottery. The crops in the other

towns have been larger than ours since they have stopped their lotteries. It has been this

way because they had more people to do the harvesting. The lottery is out of date and not

meant for today?s society. Stoning people to death was frowned upon in the past and I

believe it should still be that way. Killing people this way also breeds violence in our

community. Children collecting rocks in the town square in anticipation of being the one

to give the fatal blow to the unlucky person drawn. Guarding their piles of rocks so that

they can be the person to throw the most stones. This is so scary to think of innocent

children being so cruel. This method of population control just plain hurts. Stoning

people to death is cruel and unusual punishment.

I believe that compromise is vital to the health of the community. Death is an

extremely drastic measure of population control. There are other options that I would

like to bring to the attention of the council. Instead of a person being killed I believe that

he or she could become an outcast for a year or so. This way the person is out of the

town and is no longer overpopulating our community, or we could have the family which

draws the black dot to move away. This will give more room for other families to move

in, or even more land for farming. We could even come up with a brand new tradition.

The council in office can go down in history for being the council that came up with a

new tradition that will go on for generations. We can start a family planning clinic to

encourage birth control, which would limit the population without death. We can

educate those who do not understand the idea of birth control, instead of making their

children pay for it. I would dedicate my life to educating everyone and introduce other

ways of population control. There are so many types of birth control out there, and if it

saves lives I believe that people will show more interest. If in fact, you find it necessary

to continue with this tradition please make it quicker so that we can limit the suffering of

those chosen. Stoning is a very painful and cruel. These people that have been chosen

have not committed a crime, but only had very bad luck. The stonings are also done in

front of the family, including the children. This can scar the children mentally and make

them bad for the community in the future. We hear stories in the news every day about

children who turn into killers because of something that happened to them as a child.

This is not good for the community. Imagine having to deal with murderers in our

community. Personally I enjoy our community, but it to can become as scary as the

places we hear about on the news. I believe that all of you will make the right choice.

Please give my ideas some serious consideration.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Hutchinson