Read the excerpt from "The Lottery." Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been success
ful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there. What important information does the setting in this excerpt communicate about the story? A.The setting reveals that the village people rarely shop for groceries because there is only one grocery store. B.The setting proves that the old way of selecting the names from the black box is better. C.The setting reveals that the village population is small and maintains a country lifestyle.D. The setting describes why special care is taken to secure the black box and the village family names.
The correct answer is C: The setting reveals that the village population is small and maintains a country lifestyle. Despite the relative "growth" of the village, it still has less than five hundred people, who evidently lead very rural lives. The box used in the ritual, despite its importance, is stored away with little care (it spent a year in a barn, another in the post office), as if it were unthinkable that anyone would steal it. This is typical of a small village where everybody knows each other.
