The "Laws of Probability"

"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" ("The Lottery," 265).

"Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villages, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd" (266).

All right, Perrine, you're asking for it; I've whipped out math in blogs before this one, and I'm not afraid to do it again. I quote the third question. "What normal law of probability has been suspended in this story? Granting this initial implausibility, does the story proceed naturally?"

At first, I wasn't sure what Perrine was talking about, but then I had a little epiphany. Perrine wants to know what happened during the lottery that was implausible. For Perrine, I have two answers, and then I will explode on him.

First, Old Man Warner is "the oldest man in town" (5). Some people might find it odd that someone as old as Old Man Warner would have survived the lottery every year of his life and classify that as "implausible." Second, Tessie Hutchinson was the one person who showed up late to the lottery, and it just so happened that she was the . . . winner (77-79). Is that at all likely?

My first objective in this post is to determine the plausibility of these two scenarios. I'm going to make two assumptions so I can do the math: the population of this village has remained constant at 300 people during Old Man Warner's entire life, and Old Man Warner (OMW, for short) is 150 years old (a generously high age).

• The probability of OMW's survival of the lottery for his entire life is (299/300)^150, or about a 60.6% chance.
• The probability of Tessie's death as the sole latecomer is simply (1/300), or about a 0.3% chance.
• The probability of any person winning the lottery is also (1/300), or about a 0.3% chance.

Certainly, the more implausible case of the first two is the second one -- it's extremely unlikely that the sole latecomer to the lottery would be the winner. Surprisingly, it's somewhat likely that someone can live to be 150 years old without winning the lottery in the village.

My second objective in this post is to say this very clearly. NO NORMAL LAW OF PROBABILITY HAS BEEN SUSPENDED, AND YOUR SENTENCE USES PASSIVE VOICE. I feel very strongly about this. Just because it was unlikely that Tessie (the only person who came late) would be stoned does not mean that a law of probability was suspended. The laws of probability always stand, even when the most likely outcome does not occur.

Unless someone can convince me that Perrine was referring to some other rule of probability, I will remain angry at him. Perrine, you stick to literature, and I'll stick to math, and we won't have to cross each other anymore once I finish this class.

Jovial and Whimsical Tone

Haha, just kidding.

"Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside, too" ("Popular Mechanics," 1).

The setting in the story is very vague -- first, the characters were "in the bedroom" (2), and then they moved "into the kitchen" (19). Other than that, there are few concrete details in the setting.

What we know from the first paragraph is the weather outside and its relationship with the moods of the characters in the story. The snow was "melting into dirty water," and the darkness outside reflected the darkness "on the inside" of the characters. The darkness shows up again when the kitchen window gives "no light" (31). That dark and dreary setting sets a gloomy atmosphere of the story. Certainly, the darkness also lives within the characters due to their actions (particularly at the end -- I can't say what happened specifically, but I'm pretty sure that baby is a goner).

There is one more setting detail. The beginning of the story is in the bedroom, but when the male character moves toward the female, she takes "a step back into the kitchen" (19). That little move -- that tiny shift in setting -- was kind of a defensive move, and it foreshadowed the escalation of their argument over the baby.

Additionally, I've been informed that "Popular Mechanics" is the name of a magazine, which I didn't know. My initial reaction to the title was that it meant "things that people do on a regular basis." If that's the case, then the title applies this story to life in general, and it becomes an allegory for any kind of conflict in which an issue is decided suddenly without thinking of consequences.

"And lying, she knew, was a sin."

"Zoe came up, slow, from behind and gave him a shove. His arms slipped forward, off the railing, out over the street. Beer spilled out of his bottle, raining twenty stories down to the street" ("You're Ugly, Too," 194).

But don't worry -- she was just joking! It reminds me of a certain Kenny who points a gun at a certain Tub to play a joke on him, but that one is a little bit more extreme.

I learned the different between verbal irony and sarcasm when I read the preface to one of the poetry units. Much like the difference between situational irony and coincidence, nobody seems to know it. I'm not even sure that I know what the difference is, but here it is. Verbal irony is any general instance of saying one thing but meaning another. Sarcasm is more specific and is sometimes a type of verbal irony; however, it's more abrasive or offensive. The difference between the two is easily observed (sorry about the passive voice -- I'm on a tight schedule) in the character of Zoe.

"She used to insist it was irony, something gently layered and sophisticated, something alien to the Midwest, but her students kept calling it sarcasm, something they felt qualified to recognize, and now she had to agree. It wasn't irony" (6). I'm here to argue that while sometimes she is definitely sarcastic, there are times when she is just being ironic.

When Zoe says that an "ultrasound" sounds like "a really great stereo system," she is not being sarcastic because her words are not harsh (57). Really, once the funny part is over, it's just kind of a sad statement. On the other hand, the joke about "you're ugly, too" is sarcastic (66). And since somebody is offended in sarcasm, it's that much funnier.

I'm not sure what else I wanted to cover in this post. Oh, yes. I think the point of the story could be to point out when humor goes too far, and I quoted the most concrete example of that in the story at the beginning of my post.

Does humor ever really go too far, though?

"And isn't it ironic?"

"'My brave little man!' she said with her eyes shining. 'It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel'" ("The Drunkard," 84).

Allow me to point out to the mother that only one page ago, this "guardian angel" was drunk on the streets threatening and cursing at old women (68-70). One of the questions in the book asks about the principal irony in the story, so I've come up with a list of possibilities. The irony in this story, if I'm not mistaken, is situational irony, and here are a few examples of that within the story:

• As I quoted previously, the mother praised her little boy for being "brave" and his father's "guardian angel," praise one wouldn't expect going to a boy who drank an entire glass of porter (34).
• The literal "drunkard" in the story is the father -- drinking is his "greatest weakness" (11) -- yet the only character who gets drunk in the story is a little boy (whose age is probably somewhere around ten as he is on the cusp of being able to look after his younger sibling -- 15).
• The little boy saved his father from drinking during the story by means of drinking himself. Not . . . drinking himself -- "himself" is not an object of the gerund in my last sentence.

To determine the main irony in "The Drunkard," I can probably combine the three situational ironies above into one grand ironic statement. The little boy in "The Drunkard" prevents his alcoholic father from drinking and wins the praise of his mother by drinking alcohol himself.

A lot of people -- including songwriters -- have trouble understanding irony, so I thought I might help with this quote from Hank Green: "Alanis Morissette, when you get a death row pardon two minutes too late, that is extremely unfortunate. It is not, however, ironic."