aaaaaand the winner is...

oh. yikes. you mean you DON'T want to be the winner?
whoops. this is... erm. awkward [IT'SONLYAWKWARDIFYOUMAKIEITAWKWARD!]

the first question in the book asks first what a "lottery" is, and then how that title leads you to think something very different.

a lottery is something that is regarded as a chance event. that perfectly fits the action of a story. everything was indeed random, so based on that we shouldn't really expect anything different? right? WRONG-O! today's society tells us that a lottery is a game where you win. the story provides exactly the opposite. life is not a game, so there goes that theory. most importantly, the "winner" of this particular lottery is anything but! I'm not sure that anyone chalks up the loss of life as a "win" in their scorebook (who would even keep a book of that sort of thing?!) but, in that way, this title is incredibly misleading in terms of what the story presents.