The Black Spot

The Power of the Void- Band Assignment
I would call the title of the story “The Black Spot”. It gives an insight to the story and it creates tension and questions on people’s minds. This is like the beginning of the suspense and tension as well as the start to the story. “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot…” this quote from the text is when the Hutchinson family opened up their papers to see if any of them has the black dot on their papers. I taste that everyone of the villagers was curious of who got the black spot; this was the moment when the intensity of the villagers was high. But after the villagers found out that Tessie got the black spot, a release occurred. There was no more suspense or curiosity and it turned into a relief. When I found out the end of the story was not given, questions starts to twirl in my head. Questions to what the ending could be. The mystery paper made me curious but since there was no ending to the story, I predicted that the mystery paper holds the ending. “Do not open until 5p.m and follow the instructions” I did not open the mystery paper at 5 because of the curiosity that makes me open it afterschool. By writing this, I am following the instructions on the mystery paper.

THE BLACK BOX. THE BLACK SPOT. THE BLANK PAPER.

The black box is the key to the ritual/lottery. This ritual or “lottery” is done every year by Mr. Graves and Mr. Summers. They made the papers and placed a black dot, then stuffed them in the black box. Whoever receives the paper with the black spot will receive the consequences.
The black ‘deadly’ spot sits on a paper and the unlucky villager that takes this paper will receive consequences. That unlucky villager happens to be Tessie Hutchinson. As a result of this, the villagers threw stones at her. This was the ritual/lottery that takes place every year as a tradition to this village.
The blank paper shows the other villagers luck of receiving a blank paper instead of the paper with the black spot. I predicted that nothing happens to those villagers and that they are safe.


After reading the ending to the story, there was still some tension and curiosity because the ending still seems mysterious and left unexplained. Instead of having the release of tension and curiosity, the author ends the story unexplained. My predictions were somewhat correct and somewhat wrong. 50-50. I feel the need to re-read parts of the story to get the mood of the story and try predicting something with that. Knowing other information’s about the story would have helped me make better predictions. Leaving voids in the story and exaggerating it makes the story mysterious and readers would ask more questions because of the unexplained voids. No title or author leaves the reader wondering more of what the author did to the story. His or her flavors and writing choices is unknown which gives the readers no information on what the author’s impact on the story. No ending cause a greater tension and curiosity as people are predicting that they would know the whole story. Text clues and foreshadowing gives excellent small voids that add up to the whole void of the story. The mystery paper that contains the ending made the final touches to this whole void assignment.