ellauri043.html on line 204: The Mỹ Lai Massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (About this soundlisten)) was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated as were children as young as 12.[1][2] Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
ellauri171.html on line 609: A Levite man and his concubine (a secondary wife without the legal status of a wife) were traveling through the hill country of Judah. The village they entered seemed unfriendly but they were eventually make welcome by an old man, who let them stay in his house. During the night they they were attacked by some gay villagers who wanted to rape not the woman, but the man.
ellauri171.html on line 611: The Levite then pushed the concubine out the door, giving her to the villagers. They gang-raped and tortured her throughout the night. Finally they left her for dead.
ellauri270.html on line 311: The morning of June 27th is a sunny, summer day with blooming flowers and green grass. In an unnamed village, the inhabitants gather in the town square at ten o’clock for an event called “the lottery.” In other towns there are so many people that the lottery must be conducted over two days, but in this village there are only three hundred people, so the lottery will be completed in time for the villagers to return home for noon dinner.
ellauri270.html on line 317: The children’s activities—gathering stones—have a false innocence about them. Because this resembles the regular play of children, the reader may not assume gathering stones is intended for anything violent. The word “raids,” however, introduces a telling element of violence and warfare into the children’s innocent games. Similarly, the reader is lulled into a false sense of security by the calm and innocuous activities and topics of conversation among the adult villagers. We see the villagers strictly divided along gendered lines, even as children.
ellauri270.html on line 323: Mr. Graves sets the stool in the center of the square and the black box is placed upon it. Mr. Summers asks for help as he stirs the slips of paper in the box. The people in the crowd hesitate, but after a moment Mr. Martin and his oldest son Baxter step forward to hold the box and stool. The original black box from the original lotteries has been lost, but this current box still predates the memory of any of the villagers. Mr. Summers wishes to make a new box, but the villagers don’t want to “upset tradition” by doing so. Rumor has it that this box contains pieces of the original black box from when the village was first settled. The box is faded and stained with age.
ellauri270.html on line 325: The details of the lottery’s proceedings seem mundane, but the crowd’s hesitation to get involved is a first hint that the lottery is not necessarily a positive experience for the villagers. It is also clear that the lottery is a tradition, and that the villagers believe very strongly in conforming to tradition—they are unwilling to change even something as small as the black box used in the proceedings.
ellauri270.html on line 329: Even though the villagers value tradition, many of the specific parts of their traditions have been lost with time. This suggests that the original purpose of the lottery has also been forgotten, and the lottery is now an empty ritual, one enacted simply because it always has been. When we later learn the significance of the slips of paper, it seems horribly arbitrary that they are simply made by a person the night before.
ellauri270.html on line 331: In preparation for the lottery, Mr. Summers creates lists of the heads of families, heads of households in each family, and members of each household in each family. Mr. Graves properly swears in Mr. Summers as the officiator of the lottery. Some villagers recall that there used to be a recital to accompany the swearing in, complete with a chant by the officiator. Others remembered that the officiator was required to stand in a certain way when he performed the chant, or that he was required to walk among the crowd. A ritual salute had also been used, but now Mr. Summers is only required to address each person as he comes forward to draw from the black box. Mr. Summers is dressed cleanly and seems proper and important as he chats with Mr. Graves and the Martins.
ellauri270.html on line 337: Tessie Hutchinson’s late arrival establishes her character in a few sentences: she cares little about the lottery and the pomp and circumstance of the ritual. She is different from the other villagers, and thus a potential rebel against the structure of the village and the lottery.
ellauri270.html on line 341: Tessie joins her family in the crowd, as all the villagers stand with their households, but her sense of humor sets her apart from the rest. She is clearly well-liked and appreciated by the villagers, which makes her eventual fate all the more surprising and disturbing.
ellauri270.html on line 347: Mr. Summers asks if the Watson boy is drawing this year. Jack Watson raises his hand and nervously announces that he is drawing for his mother and himself. Other villagers call him a “good fellow” and state that they’re glad to see his mother has “got a man to do it.” Mr. Summers finishes up his questions by asking if Old Man Warner has made it. The old man declares “here” from the crowd.
ellauri270.html on line 349: Jack Watson’s role continues the examination of family structures and gender roles. Jack earns respect and identity as a man among the villagers by drawing in the lottery. He is referred to as a “good fellow” and “a man” who is looking after his “helpless” mother.
ellauri270.html on line 365: The conversation between Mr. Adams and Old Man Warner establishes why the lottery is continued in this village, while it has been ended in others: the power of tradition. As the oldest man in the village, Old Man Warner links the lottery to traditional civilization, equating its removal to a breakdown of society and a return to a primitive state. For the villagers, the lottery demonstrates the organization and power of society—that is, a group of people submitting to shared rules in exchange for protection and support. But we see that the lottery also shows the arbitrariness and corruption of many of these social rules.
ellauri270.html on line 373: Mr. Summer’s casual language and camaraderie with the villagers contrast with what is at stake. Tessie’s reaction is the first explicit sign of something horrifying at the heart of the lottery. She is as outspoken in her anger as she was in her humor—although rather too late, and it’s assumed she wouldn’t argue if someone else had been chosen. Bill resignedly accepts the power of the tradition.
ellauri270.html on line 377: This passage shows the self-serving survival instinct of humans very clearly. Each person who speaks up is protecting his or her own skin, a survival instinct that Jackson shows to be natural to all the villagers, and by extension all humans. Tessie is willing to throw her daughter and son-in-law into harm’s way to have a better chance of saving herself. The other women are relieved to have not been chosen—no one speaks up against the lottery until they themselves are in danger.
ellauri270.html on line 393: The inhumanity of the villagers, which has been developed by repeated exposure to the lottery and the power of adhering to tradition, still has some arbitrary limits—they are at least relieved that a young child isn’t the one chosen. They show no remorse for Tessie, however, no matter how well-liked she might be. Even Tessie’s own children are happy to have been spared, and relieved despite their mother’s fate. Jackson builds the sense of looming horror as the story approaches its close. WTF, Tessie is clearly the odd one out, so the outcome of the lottery was fortunate!
ellauri270.html on line 395: Mr. Summers tells the crowd, “let’s finish quickly.” The villagers have forgotten several aspects of the lottery’s original ritual, but they remember to use stones for performing the final act. There are stones in the boys’ piles and some others on the ground. Mrs. Delacroix selects a large stone she can barely lift. “Hurry up,” she says to Mrs. Dunbar beside her. Mrs. Dunbar gasps for breath and says that she can’t run. Go ahead, she urges, “I’ll catch up.”
ellauri270.html on line 401: The children pick up stones, and Davy Hutchinson is handed a few sharp pebbles in a paper cone. Tessie Hutchinson holds out her arms desperately, saying, “it isn’t fair,” as the crowd advances toward her. A flying stone hits her on the side of her head. Old Man Warner urges everyone forward, and Steve Adams and Mrs. Graves are at the front of the crowd. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Tessie screams, and then the villagers overwhelm her.
ellauri270.html on line 403: By having children (even Tessie’s own son) involved in stoning Tessie, Jackson aims to show that cruelty and violence are primitive and inherent aspects of human nature—not something taught by society. Tessie’s attempts to protest until the end show the futility of a single voice standing up against the power of tradition and a majority afraid of nonconformists. Jackson ends her story with the revelation of what actually happens as a result of the lottery, and so closes on a note of both surprise and horror. The seemingly innocuous, ordinary villagers suddenly turn violent and bestial, forming a mob that kills one of their own with the most primitive weapons possible—and then happily going home to supper.
ellauri270.html on line 421: The villagers in the story perform the lottery every year primarily because they always have—it’s just the way things are done. The discussion of this traditional practice, and the suggestion in the story that other villages are breaking from it by disbanding the lottery, demonstrates the persuasive power of ritual and tradition for humans. The lottery, in itself, is clearly pointless: an individual is killed after being randomly selected. Even the original ritual has been… read analysis of The Power of Tradition.
ellauri284.html on line 638: The Bansal brothers, Basant and Roop — sons of a mustard-seed-oil seller from a small village nearby — made their fortune buying up adjoining plots of land for bigger developers. As they built M3M India, which stands for “Magnificence in the Trinity of Men, Materials and Money,” they became adept at sweet-talking villagers over a hookah pipe, locals said. The Bansals, who declined to comment for this article, helped IREO put together the land for the Trump project.
xxx/ellauri148.html on line 134: More recently: Israel is the world's nastiest terrorist state since Nazi Germany, (apart from the USA actions in My Lai, Vietnam, when US soldiers massacred 500 unarmed villagers). USA always supports the Israeli atrocities, it even gives the Israelis the aircraft and other weapons for killing Palestinians. Now the USA is blocking UN from criticising Israel. UK politicians and media usually support Israel. Ironic, isn't it? I guess it's usually the guys that feel they're losing that are the most atrocious.
xxx/ellauri176.html on line 150: The plot centres on the neurotic young priest Serge Mouret, first seen in La Conquête de Plassans, as he takes his orders and becomes the parish priest for the uninterested village of Artauds. The inbred villagers have no interest in religion and Serge is portrayed giving several wildly enthusiastic Masses to his completely empty, near-derelict church. Serge not only seems unperturbed by this state of affairs but actually appears to have positively sought it out especially, for it gives him time to contemplate religious affairs and to fully experience the fervour of his faith. Eventually he has a complete nervous breakdown and collapses into a near-comatose state, whereupon his distant relative, the unconventional doctor Pascal Rougon (the central character of the last novel in the series, 1893's Le Docteur Pascal), places him in the care of the inhabitants of a nearby derelict stately home, Le Paradou.
xxx/ellauri228.html on line 444: The four Venezuela sisters had enough. They were tired of poverty, tired of their abusive father, and tired of being harassed by villagers who hated their father even more than they did. Bye to El Salto de Juanacatlan, Jalisco, forever, and on to San Francisco to start their lives over.
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