Comparison Of The Interlopers And The Lottery

Tension and surprise is what encourages the reader to keep reading and these two stories can do it well. The author of these two stories use suspense, foreshadowing, and structure of text to create these effects. The first short story is “The Interlopers”, this is a short story about two families that have hated each other for several generations, of those generations come the main characters, Ulrich and Georg, these two also have a deep hatred towards each other. One day though both of them come across each other in a forest alone, and these two were both armed and stared each other with their eyes filled with bloodlust, but before any of them could make a move, a branch fell on both of them and left them incapable of moving, forcing them

to wait for their friends that were following them. The Second story is “The Lottery” which is a short story about a town that have an annual event which they call a “lottery”. The citizens of this town all participated but did not want to “win”. All seemed calm throughout the story until one of them were chosen, Tessie, a woman married to a man named Bill, and once she was chosen it became clear what the purpose of the lottery was, and after that Tessie Hutchinson became one of the many victims from this town's annual lottery being killed by the other citizens.

Both authors manipulate the pacing of their stories to progress slowly, and give a few clues on the ending twist.

In “The Lottery” the author slows the pacing by being descriptive on things that aren’t necessarily important to the plot. An example of pacing in “The Lottery” is near the beginning of the story (first two paragraphs) where things are still being introduced, The author chooses to spend a lot of time describing the scenery and how children were recently released for summer break, instead of developing the plot and this is intentional. In “The Interlopers” the pacing is slowed down in the introduction which give a large amount of background on the history of the families then tying it together with the two character we later follow, Ulrich and Georg. This slow pacing continued when the two characters encountered each other and the author gave detailed descriptions on their feelings, weapons, and expressions. The pacing started to speed up after the two characters make an agreement to no longer hate each other and joined forces and started to scream for their men’s help, who were supposedly following them. After their scream both character became anxious for help, and they think that one of their groups have been

spotted.

Both authors structure the text to be descriptive to keep the tension throughout the text.

In “The Interlopers” the author is very descriptive to try and limit the amount of information that you get that progresses the plot, this also helps to control the pacing. An example of this is when the author tells us the rich history filled with hatred that the two families had, another example is when in the forest, where most of the story takes place, is introduced and described. In “The Lottery” the author does similarly, in the beginning the setting is described in great detail and some of the non-recurring characters are also mentioned. Later when the lottery is occurring, the author showcases Tessie and how other people react to her, many times people would see her as odd or someone who just act differently, an example of this can be found when Mrs. Delacroix “laughs softly: (paragraph 8 lines 7-8), or when people near her laugh when she encourages her husband Bill to go up when it was his turn and says “Get up there Bill”(paragraph 30 line 1) But near the beginning a subtle hint to the end is given which give the reader some pieces to put

together.

The authors of these stories both foreshadow event that are going to occur. Foreshadowing gives you details on an event that happens later in the story, but the details at first don’t always make sense. In “The Interlopers” the author gives details on the various injuries that Georg and Ulrich have received when the branch fell onto them, among these injuries one impaired their vision then later in the story one of them mentions having trouble seeing because of the blood flowing over his eye. Then when both having stopped yelling for help, Ulrich mentions to have spotted them, and both men start to yell again. It was dark and with his injuries, Ulrich only saw figures and didn’t think about the possibility of it being something else. When the figures seen approached them, Georg was able to see that it was wolves. In “The Lottery” a similar subtle hint was given, but it was earlier in the story. Near the beginning the when the children were mentioned and said to be in summer break, another detail is given to the reader, and that is that the children were collecting and piling up stones. This detail was not mentioned in anyway for the remainder of the text until the end, after Tessie was chosen the first thing the other citizens did was to grab the stones piled up at the beginning of the story use them to throw at Tessie.

Both authors are very capable of creating tension through out their story and using that to lead to a surprise through the use of pacing, structure of text and foreshadowing. The use of structure of text in both stories allowed the authors to make the reader imagine the situations the characters are placed in and this also allows them to feel tension whenever something happens to them making them wonder what will come next. Their use of pacing allowed the authors the make the reader progress through the plot at a certain speed and this made the readers feel suspense since the authors provide a lot of details on things like scenery, time, and how the characters feel and providing less on the actual events that are occurring. Foreshadowing gave the reader details to think about, gave them clues to connect and made them feel the suspense as the reader waits for the actual big event.