Voids: In Literature

Story Reflection

1. What would you call this story? Why?

I would title this story The Lottery, because the whole story is always referencing to a lottery, and all of the villagers are afraid of it. This gives the title more significance because the reader doesn’t know what the lottery is.

2. What did you think was going to happen? What clues in the text led you to think this?

I thought that the lottery was one where the winner had to give away all of their money to the other villagers or make the money go to the profit of the town and then force the winners to live like insignificant, unimportant people. What led me to these conclusions was the fact that everyone was so solemn and on edge throughout the whole story.

3. How did you feel when the end of the story was not given to you?

I felt really disturbed when I was not given the end of the story because I still had many important, uncertain questions in my mind. I wanted to know what happened because I didn’t know what the lottery was and also why everyone was so nervous about it.

4. How did you feel when you were handed the mystery paper? What did you think was in it? Did you follow the instructions? Why or why not?

I felt nervous when I was handed the paper, mainly because I did not know what was in it. However, I did know that there was a wordle in it, for you could see it plainly through the paper. I was able to follow the instructions on the paper that told me not to open it till 5pm, and it was hard, but I made it easier on me because I put it in a spot in my locker where I ignore what is up there till the end of the day.

5. How did you feel about the black box and the black spot/blank paper? Explain.

The fact that the teachers used a black box was really unsettling because it was just like the one in the story. I got a paper with no black dot, so I felt somewhat calmed because mine was not marked apart from the others. However, I still did feel uncertainty because it could have been the other way around with the blank papers being something bad.

6. How did you feel when you read the end of the story? Explain.

I felt shocked; however I also felt some uncertainty still. There was still one last question left unanswered in my head, and the transfer to the end of the story was choppy and not flowing. This made me ask, “Is this really how it ended?”

7. Were your predictions correct? How did you feel about that?

My predictions that the reasons that all of the villagers were really nervous because they had to give all their money away, etc… were incorrect. This made me wonder how the author did it and this uncertainty made me feel really shocked.

8. What would have helped you to make a better prediction?

The thing that would have enabled me to make better predictions would have been more text clues from the audience at the lottery, such as gossiping. This would have given me more content to study and deconstruct.

9. Why did the author leave these voids in the story?

The author left the voids in the story to keep the reader’s attention. Without the voids, the story would have been uninteresting to me and I would have walked away.

10. Explain the power of the void in this experience:

A. No title/author information – Made me wonder what the whole story was going to be about.

B. No ending – Made me really question and think about what the ending was going to be, because I knew I would get the ending eventually.

C. Text clues and foreshadowing throughout – Made me uncertain because the villagers were connotating the lottery with bad ideas, and I did not know what sort of lottery is bad.

D. Mystery paper – Made me annoyed because I did not know when I could open it, yet I somehow knew that the ending of the story was in it. It made me ask “Why are the teachers doing this?”

E. Delayed ending – Made less tension in me, because when I put it in my locker, I forgot about it, not really thinking about it until the end of the day. It still made me ask “Why? What happens?”

F. Anything else that created tension and conflict for you… The fact that I had some idea of what was going on really unsettled me because I did not know what to make of it and what was going to happen to me or in the story.

Voids: Tension and Release

The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides an exceptional education that challenges each student to develop (Silence) the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible global citizen.

I feel that adding the word Silence after develop provides a void with maximum tension for the listener because it is just before the part where the mission statement is going to describe what the “develop” is. A void creates tension for the audience by making them uncertain and asking questions. One way to create tension is to add silence, which is possibly the best void, in which the listener wonders where, when and why the main idea is and what happened to it. Pausing right after “develop” makes the audience ask questions, in this case, “What?” “How?” I believe that this place for silence will provide the maximum tension for the audience.

One of the way composers can create tension for the audience is to remove or add an element of music. The composer may call for the melody, harmony or pulse to be added or removed. In the absence of one of these, the audience feels tension and asks questions because they are uncertain of what will happen next etc. When the composer decides to provide the release to the tension (the answer to the audience’s questions), he or she just adds or removes the element which they changed in the beginning.