Read it & Reap: THE HUNGER GAMES & THE LOTTERY Conversation

When the short story THE LOTTERY ran in The New Yorker in the summer of 1948, readers sent letters of protest and canceled their subscriptions. Author Shirley Jackson was flooded with angry letters including one from her own mother saying, "this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days."
Not much has changed since 1948. Many adults have objected to the violent premise of the YA series, THE HUNGER GAMES. In the series, each district of a futuristic United States provides a child at the Reaping to fight to the death against the other districts' children in the Hunger Games. The story's heroine, Katniss, bravely fights to survive the televised, violent, and sickly voyeuristic games.

Readers and listeners, though, shout down the detractors of THE HUNGER GAMES. Many of them contend that the shocking premise of THE HUNGER GAMES is actually a compelling commentary on how desensitized we are to the violence in our media both real and dramatized.

What will SYNC listeners have to say? Were you shocked the first time you read THE LOTTERY? Did you, after hearing THE HUNGER GAMES, wish you could somehow grant Tessie from THE LOTTERY some of Katniss's survival skills?

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You can join the conversation about these titles by looking for these editions at your library or your preferred retailer:

THE HUNGER GAMES
by Suzanne Collins (Read by Carolyn McCormick)
Published by Scholastic Audio

THE LOTTERY
by Shirley Jackson (Read by Carol Jordan Stewart)
Published by Audio Partners

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by jacky faber on July 29, 2010 at 10:22am

The Lottery has always been one of my favorite short stories. I like anything that Shirley Jackson wrote (especially "The Possibility of Evil" and "The Lottery"). Things are not always as they seem in her stories. :)

And, The Hunger Games! Wow! I gave this book as a gift to everyone I know two Christmases ago. It is THAT good. I am looking forward to listening to it this time around. Also looking forward to Mockingjay, which comes out in a few weeks. What will happen to Katniss? And what about Gale? My thirty-something sister, who said she would never read another young adult book after the "sweet valley high" days, LOVED this book and Catching Fire (book 2 in the trilogy) and could NOT put them down.

I'm pretty sure I could talk about The Hunger Games all day. :)

Permalink Reply by Jenn Dowell on July 29, 2010 at 11:59am

There's a great article about "The Lottery" author Shirley Jackson over on Salon.com:

To judge by her fiction, she regarded most people as reflexively vain, petty and censorious -- and she'd never even been on the Internet! Humanity did not disappoint her expectations. Of the hundreds of letters she received about "The Lottery," she found that at first "people were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch."

Read the full article

Permalink Reply by Xe Sands on July 29, 2010 at 1:20pm

I remember "The Lottery" from my school days, and then the various TV adaptations of it. Excellent and very thought-provoking story. Just re-read it with my twelve year-old daughter earlier this year. She and her friend talked about it for weeks!

Permalink Reply by jacky faber on July 29, 2010 at 4:07pm

geez. I downloaded this week's titles without any problems (which I had last week). But they keep showing up under "music" on my ipod and I can't remember how to get them to come in under "books" :(

Permalink Reply by Jenn Dowell on July 29, 2010 at 4:18pm

Plug your iPod into your computer and access it though iTunes. If they're not already, you can select the tracks for each book and put them into their own playlist. Select all of the tracks. Choose GET INFO under FILE in the iTunes menu. Under OPTIONS, you can mark it as MEDIA KIND: Audiobook, which should get it to show up under "Books" on your iPod!

Permalink Reply by jacky faber on July 29, 2010 at 8:10pm

woo hoo! got it!! :) thanks!!

Permalink Reply by Jo Beth Robets on July 31, 2010 at 9:27pm

To get this out of music and into auto books highlight all the tracks in the book, then right click and select get info. Then the tab options.( I think it is the last tab) Then from the various drop down menus select what you want, i.e. skip when shuffling, and put it in audiobooks. Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by Dorothy A. Allen on August 3, 2010 at 7:14pm

I had the same problem. I did add "books" to my ipod preferences library but the book would still not transfer from my itunes to my ipod, 4th generation ipod nano. Even under "books" it does not transfer. The device is listed as acceptable for transfer, but there seems to be a problem. I can listen to it from itunes.

Permalink Reply by Dorothy A. Allen on August 3, 2010 at 7:18pm

Does the ipod support this audio book?

Permalink Reply by jacky faber on August 8, 2010 at 11:25am

I put both downloads on my ipod. :) Any my poor ipod is almost 3 years old.

I had to go in, track by track and right-click, bring up the get info stuff, and change the one part where it asked whether it was music, a book, etc. I tried highlighting all tracks, but it was being stubborn. It DID work though and now the books show up under "audiobooks". Hooray!! :) Good luck!!

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Hoffine on July 29, 2010 at 6:56pm

I loved The Lottery and Hunger Games series. I'm also appalled by the info that Shirley Jackson got fan mail from people wanting to watch a "Lottery". To me, there's a difference between violence for the sake of violence and violence with a point. Both of these stories are about oppression, governmental control and how willing we are to sacrifice our fellow citizens to keep ourselves safe. The only difference is that Hunger Games, in series form, takes it a step further and adds the "hope" of rebellion.

Permalink Reply by Jenn Dowell on July 30, 2010 at 11:46am

That's such a good point about the theme of hope—and part of the reason I'm so looking forward to MOCKINGJAY!