- Word logic – clear message which is delivered by grammatically correct words and sentences.
- The reading-writing connection – mutual influence between a person’s ability to write well-structured texts and the amount of the read books.
- Comparison and contrast – the ability to discuss similar and different elements in a writing.
- Writing about literature – ability to provide several opinions on one topic within one text.
A person perceives the world through the subjective prism of his or her own life experience, during which character, habits, and attitude to certain phenomena are formed. Accordingly, the expected consequences of specific events for different people may differ. In literature, this statement can be true both for the characters in work and for the reader (Wesling, 2019). In the stories The Story of an Hour, The Lottery, and The Cask of Amontillado, the central characters are in a state of anticipation of a favorable outcome of this or that situation, which ends with their death.
In the story of Kate Chopin, the main character Louise Mallard subconsciously dreams of freedom, although she cannot allow such thoughts to be married. Having learned about her husband’s death, after a moment, she begins to fantasize about a new life and is surprised that such a tragic event brings her a feeling of lightness and joy. It is fair to assume that in marriage, which is the basis of her life, the girl feels unfree and depressed. At the end of the story, Louise learns that her husband is not dead, and she cannot survive such seemingly good news since her dreams were already about another life.
Intentional homicide can also result from incorrect expectations. Edgar Alan Poe’s work, The Cask of Amontillado, raises the question of retribution in an unusual way. The humiliated nobleman Montresor cruelly takes revenge on his wealthy friend Fortunato, skillfully playing on his pride. Fortunato is a wine connoisseur and agrees to go to the Montresor house’s cellars, believing about the rare wine in the basement. No danger signs stop him from the desired drink, and Montresor calmly deprives a person of freedom and life.
In the story, The Lottery, the expectation and the event’s real consequences do not coincide with the characters and the reader himself. Usually, the drawing of a lottery, for example, a state one, is perceived as an opportunity to try his luck and receive a reward. However, in Shirley Jackson’s work, the seemingly harmless scenery of traditional small-town fun becomes the scene of an act of bloodshed. According to the plot, the woman who won the rally becomes a victim of the townspeople who throw stones at her. The reader’s habitual expectation of a pleasant ending and a favorable outcome of the lottery turns into a terrible picture. However, the murder in this work, although similar to what happened in The Cask of Amontillado, has one fundamentally significant difference. The killer in Edgar Alan Poe’s story is aware of himself and murders for personal satisfaction. In this case, Shirley Jackson’s citizens prefer mass murder as a way of manifesting their cruelty. Thus, a disturbing expectation can appear not only in literary characters but also in readers.
To sum up, the inability to match expectations with real consequences is a crucial element that links the three pieces. In The Story of an Hour, the main character herself cannot stand the decisive difference between the events presented and the reality. In The Cask of Amontillado, wrong expectations lead the central character to ruin. Within The Lottery, the hopes of not only the hero but also the reader are violated. The diversity in the state lottery’s perception and the one held in The Lottery is the distinction in the expected reward. The difference in murders in the stories of Edgar Alan Poe and Shirley Jackson lies in the various attitudes towards murder: personal, conscious, and mass impersonal.
Reference
Wesling, D. (2019). Perception and expectation in literature. In Animal perception and literary language (pp. 213-273). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.