这是Shirley Jackson的那篇特别出名的短篇小说吧。
这是篇隐喻故事。故事设定在一个架空的，保留着古老传统的村庄。每年，族长都会从黑箱子里选出一个人来献祭。献祭的方式即是被所有其他村人活活砸死。
你问的这个问题正是这篇小说的核心。为什么大家要用石头砸中奖的人呢？为了祭祀。但是祭祀本身就是一个相当古老的，已经过时了的传统。村民们自己估计也不知道为什么要保留这这么个传统，只是被动地年年重复着一个机械化的程序，甚至对死亡视而不见。这部小说想讽刺的就是人类墨守着陈腐的老旧的事情的愚昧。

The Lottery: More Good Than Harm
Have you noticed the large number of stalls scattered near bus stops and shopping centers selling lotteries? Have you watched the rites drawing lottery on TV and read the draw prize winning numbers publicized on newspapers every week? Have you heard of some poor workers earning great wealth by lottery overnight? Admit it or not, lottery has already become a much concerned social issue of wide controversy in our city.
There‘s no denying that lottery may encourage people to indulge in a spectacular dream of gaining great fortune overnight without hard work and thus distract their devotion to routine work. However, an objective analysis shows that lottery does more good than harm, mainly for three specific reasons.
First of all, lottery offers an effective way to collect great amount of funds needed for social construction and welfare of the poor. It provides people with a promising opportunity of getting desirable returns instead of plainly soliciting contributions,which somewhat meet the trait of human nature. Various kinds of lottery, such as sports lottery, welfare lottery, transfer the collected treasury to people and industries that are in urgent demand of money, hence facilitate to realize the optimization of resource allocation.
Secondly, lottery, as a novelty that emerged a few years ago, has turned into a pleasant ingredient in people‘s daily life,bringing us much excitement and surprise. It not only offers a probability of becoming rich out of good luck, but make people‘s fine wishes for future‘s affluence seem a little more reasonable as well, which may serve as a spiritual prop for those impoverished to strive on. Buying lottery is also a way of investment, like the fund operation in the stock market. The increase in value isn‘t necessarily achieved at the cost of physical labor, but mainly depends on an acute grasp of market opportunity and a profitable investment decision. Some branches of learning which claim to study the principles of lottery have also emerged, indicating lottery‘s stepping out of a mere fad into a mature stage and people‘s rational attitude towards it.
Finally, lottery also serves as an invisible bond between different social classes, which confer our materialistic world a little human touch. Statistics from a recent survey indicate that most lottery buyers consider the money their donation to the society if they aren‘t lucky enough to win the prizes. Indeed, lottery prorides us with a simple and concrete way to make a bit contribution to our country and people, as the cost of per share of lottery is considerably low. Lottery is in some way similar to gambling,but at least it‘s for a right purpose.
So as I see it, the advantages of lottery fully outweigh its disadvantages, and it has turned into a significant part in our daily life. Why not try your luck and buy some kind of lottery one day? Maybe you‘ll get a big surprise.

It must be heartbreaking to be able to appreciate true genius and yet fall just short of it yourself. A man can spend his entire life studying to be a mathematician--and yet watch helplessly while a
dropout, a janitor, scribbles down the answers to questions the professor is baffled by.
It's also heartbreaking when genius won't recognize itself, and that's the most baffling problem of all in ``Good Will Hunting,'' the smart, involving story of a working-class kid from Boston.
The film stars Matt Damon as a janitor at MIT who likes to party and hang around the old neighborhood and whose reading consists of downloading the contents of whole libraries into his photographic memory. Stellan Skarsgard (the husband in ``Breaking the Waves'') plays Lambeau, the professor, who offers a prize to any student who can solve a difficult problem. The next morning, the answer is written on a blackboard standing in the hall.
Who claims credit? None of the students does. A few days later, Lambeau catches Will Hunting (Damon) at the board and realizes he's the author--a natural mathematical genius who can intuitively see through the thorniest problems. Lambeau wants to help Will, to get him into school, maybe, or collaborate with him. But before that can take place, Will and some buddies are cruising the old neighborhood and beat up a guy. Will also hammers on the cops a little and is jailed.
He's a tough nut. He sees nothing wrong with spending his whole life hanging out with his friends, quaffing a few beers, holding down a blue-collar job. He sees romance in being an honest bricklayer, but none in being a professor of mathematics--maybe because bricklaying is work, and, for him, math isn't.
``Good Will Hunting'' is the story of how this kid's life edges toward self-destruction and how four people try to haul him back. One is Lambeau, who gets probation for Will with a promise that he'll find him help and counseling.
One is Sean McGuire (Robin Williams), Lambeau's college roommate, now a community college professor who has messed up his own life, but is a gifted counselor. One is Skylar (Minnie Driver), a British student at Harvard, who falls in love with Will and tries to help him. And one is Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Will's friend since childhood, who tells him: ``You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket. It would be an insult to us if you're still around here in 20 years.'' True, but Will doesn't see it that way. His reluctance to embrace the opportunity at MIT is based partly on class pride (it would be betraying his buddies and the old neighborhood) and partly on old psychic wounds. And it is only through breaking through to those scars and sharing some of his own that McGuire, the counselor, is able to help him. Robin Williams gives one of his best performances as McGuire, especially in a scene where he finally gets the kid to repeat, ``It's not my fault.'' ``Good Will Hunting'' perhaps found some of its inspiration in the lives of its makers. The movie was co-written by Damon and Affleck, who grew up in Boston, who are childhood friends, and who both took youthful natural talents and used them to find success as actors. It's tempting to find parallels between their lives and the characters--and tempting, too, to watch the scenes between Damon and Driver with the knowledge that they fell in love while making the movie.
The Will Hunting character is so much in the foreground that it's easy to miss a parallel relationship: Lambeau and McGuire also are old friends who have fought because of old angers and insecurities. In a sense, by bringing the troubled counselor and the troublesome janitor together, the professor helps to heal both of them.
The film has a good ear for the way these characters might really talk.
It was directed by Gus Van Sant (``Drugstore Cowboy,'' ``To Die For''), who sometimes seems to have perfect pitch when it comes to dialogue; look at the scene where Matt and Skylar break up and say hurtful things, and see how clear he makes it that Matt is pushing her away because he doesn't think he deserves her.
The outcome of the movie is fairly predictable; so is the whole story, really. It's the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective.
``Good Will Hunting'' has been rather inexplicably compared to ``Rainman,'' although ``Rainman'' was about an autistic character who cannot and does not change, and ``Good Will Hunting'' is about a genius who can change, and grow, if he chooses to.
True, they can both do quick math in their heads. But Will Hunting is not an idiot savant or some kind of lovable curiosity; he's a smart man who knows he's smart but pulls back from challenges because he was beaten down once too often as a child.
Here is a character who has four friends who love and want to help him, and he's threatened by their help because it means abandoning all of his old, sick, dysfunctional defense mechanisms.
As Louis Armstrong once said, ``There's some folks, that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.'' This movie is about whether Will is one of those folks.