Question

Read the excerpt from "The Lottery." Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful 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? The setting reveals that the village people rarely shop for groceries because there is only one grocery store. The setting proves that the old way of selecting the names from the black box is better. The setting reveals that the village population is small and maintains a country lifestyle. The setting describes why special care is taken to secure the black box and the village family names.

Answer 1

Answer:

The important information the setting in this excerpt communicates about the story is:

C. The setting reveals that the village population is small and maintains a country lifestyle.

Explanation:

As is revealed in this excerpt, the population of this village is of less than 300 people. It is clearly a small village that still maintains a country lifestyle. It mentions a post office, a grocery store, a barn... - it all sounds provincial. The excerpt shows that the box is only under special care the night before the event. For the rest of the year, it is left pretty much anywhere. The excerpt shows the old way of selecting names is now impractical, since chips of wood wouldn't fit in the box anymore. The excerpt does not gives enough information to conclude that people rarely shop for groceries. Therefore, we can safely choose letter C as our answer: The setting reveals that the village population is small and maintains a country lifestyle.