5-3-21

“You do realize that you’ve made me write more than any other teacher. In real school, I only had to write three essays, at most, every year. This year, you’ve made me write twenty-one. TWENTY-ONE! All I do is write. And I’m NOT in college.” This has become my son’s mantra. Every day he grumbles, but of those twenty papers he’s referring to, two of them are short stories he chose to write and one of them is a historical poem. Have I made him write more than any other teacher in the history of school? Possibly. But in all fairness, each of those papers served a purpose. Since he has my undivided attention all day, and since my motivating factor is his success and not a pay check, I’ve been able to have higher expectations. Teachers in classrooms can’t expect as much output from their students because they simply don’t have the time to revise and grade it all. If a salaried teacher gave out assignments the way I do, she’d be overwhelmed with work and would have absolutely no time to indulge in a private life. She’d probably even have to give up sleep. 

If you simply look at the volume of work my son has done, yeah, you’d agree. It’s a lot. But with me he has probably spent less time doing work than he would have if he were in real school. The difference is that with me there has been no busy work. Everything has been designed to sharpen one skill or another. And he hasn’t just written in English class. He’s also done a fair amount of writing for science and social studies. 

Besides, except for reading, my son never has homework. I tried it early in the year and it didn’t work. Being his teacher and his mom isn’t always easy, and at times my head spins trying to play both roles simultaneously. And homework blurred the line between mom and teacher. Homework was a mother’s domain, but when I set aside my teaching hat for the day, I wanted to be done with my teaching duties. That included homework. Somehow reading was the one exception because it’s impossible to read a book and not discuss it with someone who has read the same book. Not to mention the benefit that literature gave us something to talk about. We couldn’t exactly chat about our day over dinner. “So tell me, G3, how was your day at school?” Yeah, that doesn’t work when you haven’t spent ten minutes away from each other in eight months. But questions drawn from the books we read, that gives us something to discuss. And now, apparently writing is also something he wishes to do with me — outside school hours — provided he choses the topics and the writing is all creative. 

His latest essay, however, was a “boring stupid comparison and I’m tired of writing comparisons.” His words. He hated writing it so much that he informed me this afternoon as he made his final edits that it was his least favorite of all the papers he’d written this year. I wasn’t at all surprised because it was the hardest one to get him to write. Each sentence was painful — for me. If only he complained a little less, he might have been able to complete the assignment in half the time.

I am having him read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because I wanted to end the year with an easy book. After reading three classics and a non-fiction book, I thought it might be fun to read something that might be less taxing on the brain. And while The Hunger Games is not exactly light reading — there is a great deal to unpack and discuss — the actual reading isn’t difficult. Besides, in my quest for diversity, I did want him to read at least one woman author. It was when I started to reread the book — in order to teach it — that I remembered sitting in my freshman high school English class and reading Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I hadn’t read it in years. In fact, I remembered the premise of the story but not the actual story itself, but the premise was enough to realize it was the perfect way to introduce The Hunger Games. After all, the reaping in some ways is simply a retelling of “The Lottery.” And that is what I asked G3 to explore in this “twenty-first essay,” the essay that prompted record breaking complaining.

When G3 finally completed his final draft around 11:00 this morning, he bitterly declared, “You worked me too hard this year. I am tired of school. Tired of essays. Tired of math. Tired of taking stupid notes.” Then, he sprawled out on the floor pillows and promptly fell asleep.

Here it is, his essay on Jackson and Collins:

Death By Chance

Many times you will see similar stories in the books and short stories you read. “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, was published in 1948. Then exactly 60 years later, The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, was published. I believe that Collins got her idea for the reaping from Jackson. In literature, there are only three main story lines: man against man, man against himself, and man against nature. We obviously know the just mentioned stories are man against man because people kill people. In “The Lottery,” the winner will be stoned to death. In TheHunger Games, the winner has a chance of survival. But in both these stories the odds are never in your favor if you are chosen. 

Imagine living in a community where on a certain day death is not only welcome, but is wanted and necessary. A day where a name is picked from a box and if it’s your name your friends, family, and coworkers hurl stones at you. They bash in your skull, tear your side with the serrated rocks, and cripple you. If you lived in these communities you might have gotten to know this sort of human sacrifice as “The Lottery.” 

I think Collins got her ideas for the reaping from the just described torture. The reaping takes one boy and one girl between the ages of 12-18 from each district and puts them in some sort of wilderness. Then, the Gamemakers put bladed and metal weapons in the arena and they make the young people fight to the death. If this does not sound as bad as “The Lottery,” imagine you and your best friend face to face with only maces. One of you will live, the other won’t. So, would you drive the heavy spiked ball into your friend or would you let them kill you? Oh, I almost forgot, you have to search for water and food so you could choose to die by thirst or hunger instead. 

Now that we know what both stories are about, I will talk about their similarities. To start, we all know that someone will be killed in these events either by a mace to the head or a rock or the head. However, let’s talk about the more acute examples of similarities. One thing I have noticed is that you can’t run away because in TheHunger Games there is a force field not letting you leave. In “The Lottery,” if you run away, the townsfolk will just chase you. Another thing is both Panem, and the town in the Lottery have a mining industry. “The Lottery” just briefly mentions its mining industry, but in TheHunger Games it is mentioned throughout the book. It is important to the plot that Katniss’s father blew up while mining because that made her a good hunter.

Both events involve choosing a name from a “hat.” This shows a level of how the government doesn’t care who it is they just want to see death. Both traditions are just engraved in people’s minds, people take it as obvious. I know this because in “The Lottery” Old Man Warner says this is his 77th lottery and he argues against doing away with the lottery because it has been around so long it is a part of their culture. While talking about another town which gave up their lottery, Warner says, “Pack of crazy fools…listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves.” (pp. 4-5)  In TheHungerGames, people in the seam take the reaping as an every year thing. The towns people hate the tradition, but they don’t speak out because if they do they may die. 

Due to “The Lottery” being a short story and TheHungerGames being a novel you will obviously get more information from The HungerGames.  In “The Lottery,” Jackson may have said that the townsfolk do not know why the tradition started in order to make the story shorter.

In the book, you get the back story of why the Hunger Games started. The reason the games started is because the districts lead a rebellion and the districts lost, so as a reminder, the capitol sentences twenty-three of their children to death every year.

Characters act differently in both stories. Tessie Hutchinson wants her daughter to be in the final draw, but she can’t because women have to draw with their husbands. She also wails, “It is unfair. It is unfair.” But when Effie chooses Prim, she walks solemnly to the stage. Katniss, instead of being happy she wasn’t chosen, decides to take Prim’s place because she loves her sister.

If you are chosen in “The Lottery,” you don’t have a prayer of surviving. Twenty-four people are chosen in the Hunger Games. You have a week to train in many different things. Then, when you get to the arena, you are able to pick people off and defend yourself. One way you could play the Hunger Games is to wait for everyone else to kill each other, then you could kill the last one. Another way you could play is to kill everyone and be the victor. 

If you talk against the government in Panem, it is considered treason. And you guessed it, treason is punishable by death. In the novel, Katniss talks about how people take bets to see to who will win. She goes on to say, “Most refuse dealing with racketeers but carefully, carefully. These same people tend to be informers and who hasn’t broken the law?” (p. 17) This shows how people are scared of talking against the government. In “The Lottery,” people speak freely about the slaughter because it will not cause the government to hurt the people. In a conversation between Adams and Old Man Warner, Adams says,”They do say…that over in the North Village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.” (p. 4) This also shows how people are not afraid to speak their mind in this short story. 

Now that I have described the differences and similarities of the two stories maybe you can read them and see if you can find more. I wonder what story you’d like better. I preferred The Hunger Games because it has children and more action.