Synthesis

The short story "The Lottery" and the speech "The Perils of Indifference" show how ordinary, regular people can be terribly violent. In "The Lottery" as the entire village gathers at the town square waiting for the lottery to start, they are talking to each other having normal conversations "speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes." They then pick a random persons name from a black box and then a person from that family. Then the person that gets picked is selected at random, and then the entire village picks up handfuls of stones and stone The winner to death. Everyone picks up stones to throw, even the winners own family throws stones. In the short story Tessie Hutchinson gets stoned and her own family throws stones at her. "The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles." Little Davy is going to throw stones at his own mother, and he isn't doing it because he doesn't like her. This shows that everyone, even small children can be incredibly violent.
In the speech "The Perils of Indifference" Elie Wiesel talks about the indifference of the world. He survived the concentration camps of the Holocaust, so he knows how ordinary people can commit terrible acts of violence. The Holocaust is on a completely diferent level than stoning someone to death. He talks about how indifference can be tempting, "It is so much easier to look away from victims." Looking the other way when someone is being picked on shows how ordinary people can be violent.