The Lottery By Ira Sher

Everybody's Fault, No one's Fault. “ The Lottery '' written by Shirely Jackson is a short story about a village where an annual lottery is drawn. The person to draw the ‘winning’ ticket faces a dark twist. Author Shirely uses devices such as diffused responsibility and compliance. “The Man in the Well '' is a short passage written by Ira Sher, It explores the theme of following the crowd by showing how compliance and diffused responsibility could influence these children to form an unspoken agreement to lease the man in the well. These two authors commonly use devices such as compliance & diffused responsibility to demonstrate the theme of the following crowd or being in a state of deindividualization.. “ It’s No One’s Fault When It’s Everyone’s

This is shown on paragraph 1 where it states, “ I think it's important we decided not to help him. Everyone, like myself, was probably on the verge of asking where we could find a ladder, but then we looked at each other and it was decided. I don't remember if we told ourselves a reason why we couldn't help him but we had decided then. ” Diffused responsibility is used to show how sharing the responsibility of leaving the man in the well causes the children to lose their sense of personal responsibility and go along with actions that may hurt others but strengthen the group's connection. This helps Ira transition to the use of compliance on page 4 , “I could see Arthur was furious, but Aaron was older and bigger than he was, and nothing could be said or done...Aaron didn’t look at Aurthor off anyone and then began giving all of our names, one at a time.” This clearly demonstrates how diffused responsibility could quickly turn into compliance. All of the kids were forced to comply to Aarons actions due to him revealing their names even though it shook the foundation of the

or instance on paragraph” [5] The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” This clearly shows people were following a tradition with no questions due to feeling like they were a part of a larger, more connected community. On the other hand, compliance helps this town's dark tradition take place every year upon her.“ This proves “ Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they