What, Of This Lottery By Etgar Keret

How do our relationships with others determine who we are? Being in a country with a diversity of personalities, different people impact our lives in different ways. Regardless of how, when, or who, all personal links with others intervene in our lives one way or another. All relationships have a psychological impact on oneself. To begin with, something like Stockholm syndrome may occur. During Etgar Keret’s story, “What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?” the goldfish, forced to be friends with Sergei, urges him to wish his final wish. “He’ll have to let the goldfish go. His magic goldfish. His friend” (Keret 8). Aspiring to become free from one another, the goldfish cannot wait until Sergei makes his third and final wish. Realizing the goldfish, his only friend, would abandon him, Sergei thinks differently. After becoming free, the victim of a kidnapping case may
In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the village she writes about has an annual tradition, the lottery. At their lottery, every family draws a slip of paper. Once all of the families have drawn, they open the slip of paper. The unlucky winner is the family with the marked piece of paper. Since the winner has to be unlucky, getting stoned to death by every villager happens to be one of the family members prize. “The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (Jackson 34). In this story, no rational explanation answered why they have this morbid tradition. None of the villagers question it either. Personal connections can be like this in real life as well. After knowing someone for a long time, one might overlook some of what they do and not think anything of it. As time passes, we may even join in because certain people may have more of an influence on our lives than they realize. Concluding this idea, people we share relationships with are people who may impact our lives drastically without us even