Julie Morvitz

I thought The Lottery in Babylon was a very interesting story. Normally, when one thinks of gambling they only think about either gaining or losing money. This story introduces a new concept, that if you lose there is a consequence. In Babylon, the Lottery was of utmost importance, and if someone lost, there would be horrible consequences including someone’s worst fears. It also brought about the idea that if the Lottery is all about chance, why shouldn’t each part of it be about chance? In Babylon, that would mean choosing the person’s consequence, who delivers the consequence, and so on, all through different drawings involving chance. I thought this was an interesting and very different way of going about a simple lottery.
I thought The Library of Babel was a little confusing, but it brought about good ideas as well. The story focused on the idea that the universe is a library, and all the books are different people. Although I like this metaphor, I don’t think it holds true in all respects, because the story says that no two books are the same (like people), but in libraries there are usually many copies of the same book.