Essay on The Lottery by Beth Goobie is a Bad Influence on...

A Bad Influence Throughout high school, the most essential trait to have above intellect and organization is good behavior. Without it, a student cannot be focused during a lecture, which can lead to disappointing grades and ultimately, a dreadful high school experience. The Lottery, by Beth Goobie encourages bad and rebellious behavior acted out by the protagonist Sally Hudson. At the start of the book, Sally gets picked by the school government as annual lottery winner. As lottery winner, Sally has to expect to be the butt of all jokes and for everyone to hate her. However, Sally gets told all the secrets and classified information the school has to offer. Sally does not enjoy becoming the outcast of the school so she tries to rebel.†¦show more content†¦When her father died, Sally told her mother that he slipped and fell of a cliff during a rest stop on their way to Texas but what Sally kept a secret is that she was the one who drove her father off the cliff. This quote shows Sally brin ging the dreadful news to her mother. â€Å"He was just going out to smoke a cigarette or two when he just fell... I ran down to see if he was okay but he never got up† (Goobie 125). Instead of doing the action that most teenagers have been taught, which is to confess, Sally lied and kept a huge secret from her mother. By Sally lying to her mother and poisoning the council head, The Lottery shows how it is a negative influence on today’s teens. But yet, being sneaky and devious alone cannot cause much trouble, for a teen to become really troublesome he has to have the rebellious trait. This transits to my next subject on how The Lottery portrayed the protagonist as insubordinate. Throughout history there have always been radicals in society and in each instance they have always ended up on the wrong end of the stick, meaning they were punished. The same dogma can be applied to actions in the classroom. If a student tries to rebel, the authoritative figure disciplines h im or her. This can lead to the student losing interest in the class. In The Lottery, Sally is famous in her school for being a dissenter. This is proven when the council acknowledges Sally’s request to be dropped as lottery winner for the year. â€Å"Of