1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1. the lottery

according to liu hongli#8217;s essay, the themes of this novel can be divided into three parts(134-135). firstly, the villagers followed the tradition very blindly. people in the village didn#8217;t have their independent thinking, and they just follow what their ancestors had done and what the leaders let them do. secondly, women had very low social status, whose social status were lower than men at that time. thirdly, the loss of human nature. tessie was stoned to death by her friends, lover, and children very cruelly and ruthlessly. at that moment, people#8217;s human nature was fully lost, liu, hu, pan all believe that the theme of the short story is the loss of human nature(134-135,23-26,120-121)

the story also abounds in symbols. almost every setting, character, and object has their symbolic meaning. according to liu hongli#8217;s and sheng xiuli#8217;s essays(134-135,47-49), first are the characters#8217; names. for example, old man warner symbolizes the strong believer of tradition who is always warning against the new idea of reforming stoutly. next are the objects. one of them is the black box, which symbolize majesty, mystery and inalterability. and that it also symbolizes the crime and death. lastly are the numbers. one of them is seventy-seven. it#8217;s a number that means infinity in ancient people#8217;s mind. so the number 77 symbolizes that the old tradition lottery will be inherited from generation to generation forever.

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

At the very beginning, a copy of the original books and the translation editions are apparently needed, since I get my foremost impression about the two articles by going through the translation editions. First time of browsing the two books takes some of my time which is quite short. Then I set about my intensive reading, note-taking unfamiliar vocabulary and the sentences which might be utilized to recall the original lines or to quote as proofs of the thesis statement. During the second time of reading the two novels, feedbacks of every chapter is required to be recorded, including summarizing the logical chain of the whole story and writing down my opinion on the individual chapter. Thus, I have a clear impression of how the story goes as a whole and where the cruces lie in specific. Meanwhile, excessive information, especially the journals written by bachelors, professors, scholars and experts, is available to me owing to the electronic library of our university. From those articles and studies, I am informed with the previous discussion on the two books, with which I can conduct the process of my writing better. The last but not the least, the thoughtful help from my supervisor is indispensible. She offers me with pertinent advice while teaching me meticulous scholarship. Although high requirements and critical attitude of her make me strained and sometimes even frustrated, I really appreciate the grammatical suggestion and reasonable analysis furnished by her. Obviously, reading books, taking notes, turning to the libraries, and discussing with my supervisor are the main methods of this study.