An Analysis Of Shirley Jackson And The Lottery

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” (Twain). The Lottery begins during the summer. A small, seemingly normal, town is gathering to throw the annual “Lottery”. In the end, the townspeople—children included—gather around and stone the winner to death, simply because it was tradition. The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective. “I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). As humans develop as a race, their practices should develop with them. Shirley Jackson develops the

Do you think that “standing up for what’s right may not always the easiest path” could be a theme for both “The Lottery” and “First They Came”? Well, if you want to find out stick around and you’ll see how they’re different and how they’re alike. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small town about 300 people that every year they do this tradition. There’s a black box and slips of paper. If you get the paper with the dot on it, then you win the lottery. If you “win” the lottery then your get your win death by getting stoned to death. “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller is about when Hitler and the Nazis came for the Jews and the Socialists and the other people, and Martin didn’t stand up for them and then when he got taken nobody

In the first place, “The Lottery” communicates the theme differently than “First They Came” does. For example, in “The Lottery,” a village participates in a brutal lottery which always ends with a villager’s death. As seen in the story, “’It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” This is evidence of how scary this lottery is. But also, that when she tried to stop them from killing her, nobody listened and did the wrong thing, killing her. One man, according to the story, “’Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,’ Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson was written in 1948. The story takes place in a village square of a town on June 27th. The author does not use much emotion in the writing to show how the barbaric act that is going on is look at as normal. This story is about a town that has a lottery once a year to choose who should be sacrificed, so that the town will have a plentiful year for growing crops. Jackson has many messages about human nature in this short story. The most important message she conveys is how cruel and violent people can be to one another. Another very significant message she conveys is how custom and tradition can hold great power over people. Jackson also conveys the message of

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.

Jackson’s story takes a critical look at what can result when the customs and laws that govern society go unchallenged. She sets up the story by showing that the townspeople are quite normal. They attend the lottery while having everyday discussions about the mundane topics of life, such as taxes, food, and housework. Nevertheless, they

For example, Jackson describes the weather as clear and sunny. She elaborates on the fact that the flowers are blossoming and that the grass is flourishing. Jackson informs the reader that it is summer and that the children are out of school. She creates an idea of craziness and happiness by describing how the children play with each other. The entire day seems completely normal until it comes to the time for the lottery to take place. As the reader continues to read, the tone becomes dark and heavy. The attitudes of the characters become sour. They know that great pain and sorrow is coming but no one is willing to speak up and stop it; because they are afraid. As he/she is reading the story, the reader becomes aware that the lottery in the story is nothing like the lottery that is known today. Instead of winning money, the winner faces death. Shirley Jackson wrote, “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her.” The reader can easily understand that Tessie is afraid and that she believes the lottery is not right. What if one of the villagers stood back and refused to murder Tessie? Maybe the other villagers would also stand up against the lottery and help to put an end to it. It only takes one person to make a difference. Life has a bandwagon effect. When one person does something, whether it is good or bad, it often influences other people to do the same thing. The reader can see that in “The Lottery,” everyone is following each other and they are all doing the same thing, they are killing Tessie, they are following the crowd; and that results in a disastrous consequence, the death of

As Tessie’s protests continue and the Hutchinson family prepares to draw again the sense of apprehension is one again mounting, this time fearing for whoever wins yet still not knowing what their “prize” will be. “The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, ‘I hope it’s not Nancy’”, the silence and fear of the crowds manifests in the reader as the three children and their parents all draw slips of paper. Tessie “wins” the lottery and when the narrator explains “although the villagers had forgotten the ritual, and lost they original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (6) its suddenly shockingly clear to the readers what the winner is to receive. The drastic switch from a light and cheerful tone with talk of the beautiful day and children playing to the closing like of “and they were upon her” (7) is in part why this story is so effective. The unforeseen sinister end of the story makes the revelation of the tradition much more shocking and unsettling than had the reader known from the beginning what the outcome would be. Jackson very effectively builds a sense of apprehension and foreboding as she slowly cues the reader into the reality of the situation.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a terrify story about a small town and their traditions. The Ending of the lottery is the most shocking many of its readers have ever read. Why is it so shocking. Well Shirley jackson uses sybolism and simple narritive and her normal life to convey such a shock.

Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller have a theme of following the crowd can have disastrous consequences, but they do it in different ways. The short story “The Lottery” is a story about a small village on a nice and sunny day. Once every year they hold a lottery by drawing names out of a black box. Whoever “wins” the lottery is then stoned to death. In the poem “First They Came” the author speaks about his own experiences in concentration camps. He says how they came for certain groups of people then for him. Both of the text deal with disastrous consequences by following the crowd, however they are done is different ways.

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was an American writer from upstate New York who published over 60 literary works and raised to four children; she published her most famous story, “The Lottery,” in 1948 (Kellman 1213). After her death, New Historicism developed as a form of literary criticism focusing on viewing works based on the important events and societal factors during the time it was written and published. It also seeks to understand aspects of society through the literary works it produces (Brizee). With an agrarian village setting, “The Lottery” is an exceptional story to understand societal conditions through New Historicism analysis because it draws parallels to Jackson’s life through its descriptions of gender roles, family units, and cultural traditions similar to those of American society following World War II.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the story conducts a “lottery” that involves the families of the town to go into a drawing. Once the drawing is done, the winner of the lottery is used as a sacrifice in the town and is pelted by stones thrown from the community, including children. Furthermore, the basis of “The Lottery” has to do with psychological problems and influence. Psychoanalysis is built upon Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology, which asserts that the human mind is affected by their “unconscious that is driven by their desires and fears” (Brizee). Analyzing the concept of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” through a psychoanalytic lens convey how society reflects on the consciousness, how the denial of the mind can avoid the

“Every group feels strong, once it has found a scapegoat” (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913). A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for all the faults and corruptions that others have committed. In history, there are lots of scapegoat examples, the most popular being; Jesus Christ and the Jews in the Second World War. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson used persecution and tradition to demonstrate how scapegoating justified unfair killing. Both of these aspects relate to the World War that preceded only a couple years before the story was written. The persecution was blind and done once a year as a tradition that everyone expected to happen.

    Often, we paint a fairytale view of life for ourselves and our children. Sometimes, an author paints a frightfully realistic picture of life and forces us to reconsider the fairytale. In Shirley Jackson’s story, "The Lottery," a town each year conducts a lottery in which the winner or looser, in this case, is stoned to death by his or her own neighbors. The tradition is supposed to uphold social structure within the town, but in order to comprehend the true meaning of the story you must be able to read between the lines. "The Lottery" is a story about a town that has let its traditions go too far. Also, it is clear that the story contains eye-opening facts that lead me to

What if you lived in a village that every year has a lottery where someone “wins” by getting stoned to death. Or what if you were alive during the same time as Hitler and The Nazis and someone would not stand up for anything and then when it’s their turn you don’t stand up for them. These two stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First they came” By Martin Niemoller, Can be similar in the theme but they are presented differently. Like how they are the same by showing that following, the crowd can lead to disastrous consequences, but show how they are also very different. For example, “The Lottery” is everyone in the village join together on June 27th to have the lottery. Where they find out who “wins” the game. Everyone is Chatting to everyone and when it begins you could hear a pen drop people were so silent. Then this man named Bill Huchinson gets picked for the lottery and his wife Tessie keeps saying how it is unfair and that he did not have enough time to pick the one he wanted. So then since he picked a paper with a black dot on it Tessie Huchinson has to pick one now, and she has a black dot on her paper which means that she “Won” the lottery and now she gets stoned to death. And her best friends that she was talking to before had all turned on her and picked up a stone all because it’s a tradition. Now that was the story of “The Lottery” and it is a short story, let’s talk about the story “First They Came”. So before we get into the story let’s talk