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.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

"And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea" ("Crossing the Bar," 3-4).

I distinctly remember reading this in Channel 1 today and getting "We Will All Go Together When We Go" stuck in my head. Tom Lehrer sings, "We will all char together when we char, and let there be no moaning of the bar." Good allusion, Mr. Lehrer -- he's so smart!

I'm going to dissect the meaning of this metaphor here. "When I put out to sea" (4) is a metaphor for death. Later, "When I have crossed the bar" (16) serves as another metaphor for death, but what about "no moaning of the bar"?

Looking at it in the context of Tom Lehrer's song (which I know I'm not supposed to do, Perrine, but bear with me), we must accept that we're all going to "char" when the bomb drops on all of us. Lehrer sings about why dying together is a good thing -- it's a "comforting fact" that we're all going to be glowing with radiation when we all die, and there's no reason to "moan."

I'm going to use the definition of "bar" in my AHD that says "attorneys considered as a group." A "bar" defined thus is a group of attorneys, who state someone's case on behalf of him. The speaker does not want the "bar" -- those metaphorical "attorneys" -- to mourn his death on his behalf. Rather, he wants a quiet, subdued, and peaceful death.

Kinesthetic Imagery: Fun Stuff

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, / the movement of his powerful soft strides / is like a ritual dance around a center / in which a mighty will stands paralyzed" ("The Panther," 5-8).

According to the introduction of imagery by Perrine, the images in this second stanza are primarily kinesthetic images, meaning they have to do with muscle sense. The words "cramped" and "paralyzed" illustrate confinement through images of muscle discomfort. When the undefined image in the last stanza enters in, the panther's muscles are described as "tensed" and "arrested" (11), further suggesting confinement.

The imagery in this poem translated better to me than the imagery of any of the other assigned poems to read -- I mean, to study. While most of the poems dealt with the sights and sounds of nature or gloomy and woeful feelings, this poem dealt with restraint. I'm not really all that into that kind of stuff, but in this poem, immediately, I recalled how horrible sleep paralysis is for me. Waking up and not being able to move is a horrible feeling that never gets better no matter how often it occurs. I could vividly feel and understand the panther's desire to roam free.

Also, I'm not even really sure what a panther is. I assume that it's something that usually is unrestrained and wild and is kind of like a lion. I'll look at some pictures. The babies are kind of adorable, but I don't want to cross them:

CPCTC

"A poem -- in fact, any pattern of words -- defines an area of meaning, no more. Any interpretation is acceptable which lies within that area" ("The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry," 4).

Sometimes it's easier for me to whine about something a little bit before I can start talking about how I also appreciate it; this principle applies to the essay I just read about poetry, so here I go. Perrine was a little bit too cocky for my taste. Maybe his straightforward assertions made me feel like that irrationally. I felt like he was trying to create strife by saying things like "there are correct and incorrect readings" (1) and "the poem is a description of a sunset" (3). He was ready to be all, "I know you don't think that what I'm saying is true, but I know that it's true, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and I'm right." Whatever floats his boat. Then, by the part where he said, "ordinarily we have only the internal evidence of the poem itself on which to rest an interpretation" (3), I was a bit peeved that he was gladly typing pages and pages about how to prove that his interpretations were true without explaining how to discover interpretations. I'm over that now because I realize that his purpose was not to give us explication techniques -- he just wanted to explain that some interpretations are right and that some are wrong, which I can swallow pretty easily after reading what he had to say. Additionally, he actually said a few helpful things to someone like me who's not so great at interpretation.

What I quoted at the beginning of this post was my favorite part. The "area" explanation made complete sense to me. The reason that a poem isn't open to any interpretation is that it has words which limit the interpretation. That doesn't mean that there's always one way to view a poem, but it does mean that there are invalid ways to view it -- namely, when a view falls outside a set area. The more words a writer uses, the smaller that area becomes. That puts a good picture in my mind. Another helpful part of the essay was Perrine's distinguishing between metaphorical poems and symbolic poems. "The essential difference between a metaphor and a literary symbol is that a metaphor means something else than what it is, a literary symbol means something more than what it is" (5). Melville's poem was not (as I originally assumed) about a marching army. It was about the stars because it was metaphorical -- the language in that poem said "stars, stars, stars," and Perrine makes me feel silly for missing that. However, Blake's symbolic poem is open to more interpretation. It's hard for me to grasp that the poem is about a rose and a worm and also about something bigger than them, but it's not hard for me to understand the area to which I must confine what I find the rose and the worm to symbolize. Metaphors are challenging because they point to only one answer that can be difficult to discover. Symbols are challenging because they point to scores of answers that are subject to people's unique takes. So overall, while a few components of the essay made me go "Gahh," it was a helpful piece to read.