Abstract the Lottery by Shirley Jackson

The author’s use of characters allowed the reader

Accordingly, "The Lottery" is a tale that is difficult to set aside. It is a story that every reader might feel both love and hatred. The story has the inner power that would probably create an emotion to everyone who plans to read it. In this analysis we will be able to know what figurative language that the author used and the unique theme of the story.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the small village, at first, seems to be lovely, full of tradition, with the townspeople fulfilling their civic duties, but instead this story is bursting with contrast. The expectations that the reader has are increasingly altered. The title of this short story raises hope, for in our society the term “lottery” typically is associated with winning money or other perceived “good” things. Most people associate winning a lottery with luck, yet Jackson twists this notion around and the luck in this village is with each of the losers.

The idea of winning a lottery is associated with luck, happiness and anticipation of good things. In Shirley Jackson's story, " The Lottery", this is not the case. The irony of the story is that the winner of the lottery gets stoned to death by everyone else in the town. The story is very effective because it examines certain aspects of human nature.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.

    "The Lottery," a short story written by Shirley Jackson, is a tale about a disturbing social practice.  The setting takes place in a small village consisting of about three hundred denizens.  On June twenty-seventh of every year, the members of this traditional community hold a village-wide lottery in which everyone is expected to participate.  Throughout the story, the reader gets an odd feeling regarding the residents and their annual practice.  Not until the end does he or she gets to know what the lottery is about.  Thus, from the beginning of the story until almost the end, there is an overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen due to the Jackson's effective

Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery,” was published in 1948 and remains to this day one of the most enduring and affecting American works in the literary canon. “The Lottery” tells the story of a farming community that holds a ritualistic lottery among its citizens each year. Although the text initially presents audiences with a close-knit community participating in a social event together on a special day, the shocking twist at the work’s end—with the death of the lottery’s “winner” by public stoning—has led to its widespread popularity, public outcry and discussion, and continued examination in modern times (Jackson). One potential critical theory that can be applied to Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the reader-response

Automatically, the reader knows that serious issues are about to be discussed and that the outcome may not be positive. This novel challenges the material ideology discussed above. It does this by bringing the issues to the forefront and reporting on them in a fictitious yet realistic manner. The reader is not led to believe that the ending will be happy, he is supposed to expect the consider the harsh realities of the world throughout the piece.

How does the author position the reader towards the major theme using the narrative elements?

“The Lottery,” leaves the reader guessing until the end, wondering what the lottery consists of.

Authors often veil the inner issues of characters mental state in their writing, however with a deeper look at particular parts these issues can be unobscured, and analyzed.

Every single person on earth has their own point of view, and because of this many people react to situations differently than others. Our point of view is often affected by many things like culture, current events, and how others are acting, to name a few. Someone's point of view generally affects the way we think and react to every single thing we do. Point of view played a big role in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, “One Friday Morning” by Langston Hughes and The Twilight Zone episodes “Quality of Mercy” and “Eye of the Beholder”. Although many people have somewhat similar points of views, in all of these “stories” there are a few main characters who have different points of views that affected the outcome of the stories.

Jackson makes the statement, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (244). The next element to look at is whether or not the author gives the reader access to any character’s consciousness. In reading the story the reader can tell how certain characters feel by listening to what they say. An example of this is when Old Man Warner states, “It’s not the way it used to be. People ain’t the way they used to be” (244). The reader can tell that he is frustrated because people are not responding to the lottery as they used to. However, Jackson does not allow the reader access into any character’s consciousness and let him or her know how a particular character feels outside of what that character says.    The third concept involves the narrator’s position and presence, which determines whether that person is involved in the story or not. If the narrator is involved in the story, the reader must then determine if that character is a major or minor character and if his or her presence is pervasive, dominate, or obtrusive. Jackson’s use of the narrator in this story is one that is an outside observer looking in at the events unfolding and not a participant in the story. The fourth and final concept of point of view is the reliability of the narrator. The reader must determine if they find the narrator believable or not. The fact that the narrator in

When gossip of neighboring villages giving up the lottery wisps through the crowd, the notion seems unthinkable to the elders in this story (Jackson, 250). It is as if their foundational principals have been attacked by the idea (Jackson, 250). This imagery may serve to portray a climate of self-entitlement in our humanity.

In any story there are two types of language, figurative and literal. Language is, of course a necessary factor of any story. Without Language, an author could not tell the story. The author usually uses a combination of these two languages. Together, these languages characterize the author’s style.