The Tell-Tale Lottery

Themes

• The Tell-Tale Heart– Thin line between love and hate– Self vs “The Other”– Guilt vs Innocence

• Fear of discovery, induced by guilt, can lead to discovery

– Sanity vs Insanity• The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

Themes

• Reluctance to Abandon outdated traditions, ideas, rules etc.

• Society wrongfully designates scapegoats to atone for their sins

• Ordinary people can be more frightening than monsters.

• Following the crowd can be disastrous

• The dangers of cultural relativity

Tone

• Tone: The writer or speaker’s attitude towards the subject, the audience, or himself or himself; the emotional coloring, or emotional meaning of a work.

• “The Tell-Tale Heart”– Paranoia– Fear– Loathing– Vanity

Tone

• “The Lottery”– Tonal Shift– Happy, cheerful beginning

• Evocative of Summer• Children playing

– Tense• Claustrophobic• Menacing• Ritual Finality

Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike.

• “The Tell-Tale Heart”– “He had the eye of a vulture”– “the hellish tattoo of the heart”– “he was stone, stone dead”

Metaphor

• “The Lottery”– The old black box is a metaphor for tradition– The “black spot” is a metaphor for the

ostracisation of the scapegoat, the ritualistic culling of the “chosen” individual. A black mark.

– “Pack of young fools”

Simile

• A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike. The comparison is made explicit by the use of some such ward as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems

Simile

• “The Tell-Tale Heart”– “His room was as black as pitch”– “a low, dull quick sound-much such a sound

as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.”– “dark as midnight”