Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Perils of Indifference

1. The dangers of not caring.

2. The story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson has a shocking ending where normal people commit a horrific violence. This happens in everyday life in a small way. Nice looking people can say incredibly rude remarks. A normal looking family can be full of abuse and you would never guess. Robert Pickton came off as a normal but he killed tons of women. However, the people in the story were normal - it was just a tradition. Things aren't always as they appear because the townspeople weren't bad people. Young men fighting for Hitler in WW2 weren't necessarily bad people, they were told what they were doing was right so who can judge them? They could have been great people but people think of them as evil for doing what they were told. Good people can do bad things without even noticing they are. People always think the side they are fighting for is right and they fail to see the effects of what they do.

3. The speech "The Perils of Indifference" and the story "The Lottery" have a lot in common. Elie who gave the speech is warning not to be indifferent to violence and evil where the towns people are indifferent - they stone a friend to death. The lottery has good people doing something horrible as Elie warns us not to do. Elie doesn't want there to be more unnecessary violence and killing where the village people think giving up the lottery would be outrageous without realizing how horrific it is. They stone these people to death without caring or stopping to think about it. They were completely indifferent; they didn't even question it. On the other hand, Elie is warning that indifference, lack of caring, is an atrocity.

1 comment:

searcy said...

You have made one of the most complete connections between "The Lottery" and "The Perils of Indifference". Elie Wiesel is writing about the atrocities of the Holocaust and how it happened because so many "normal" people allowed themselves the luxury of not caring. The townspeople in "The Lottery" simply accepted the stoning of one of their own citizens, despite the fact that they would have considered themselves to be peaceful and law abiding people. The townspeople in "The Lottery" would have been non-questioning followers of Hitler's philosophy.