Analysis Of The Book ' The Lottery '

In the short story, The Lottery, Jackson applies Mr. Summers’ character to highlight his significant role in the village’s life as a whole and more particularly in the lottery. It is also significant to note that the character is also a deep irony in relation to the plot of the story. Mr. Summers is the most notable figure and an important person of all the people who manage the lottery. The lottery is held on June 27th, which is noted as being a full summer day. He is responsible for running most of the things that the village collectively performs since he has the energy and time and is devoted to the civic activities. This is one of the rationales why his character is pivotal to the development of the plot of the story.

The story started when people are gathered every end of June for the annual lottery ritual in a small village. All the head of each family are required to grab a slip a slip of paper in the box that is placed in the middle of the village. The in charge of the lottery was Mr. Summer. The conflict occurs when Tessie found out that her husband Bill was the center of the Villager’s attention. There is something on the paper that he picked. Because of that Tessie can’t even accept it and she keep on yelling that it is not fair. She believed that the time given to Bill was not enough to pick the paper that he wanted from Mr. Summer. The entire Hutchinson family, are

Dystopian stories works depict a negative view of "the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction”. Often these stories have many themes that can relate to the real world. In the dystopian story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, many themes such as false hopes,hypocrisy, ritual, and mob mentality are expressed throughout the story. In the story everyone in a small village gather in the town square for the lottery, whoever gets chosen gets stoned to death by everyone in the town including friends and loved ones. The use of different themes throughout the story relate to the literary devices and universal storytelling elements setting, verbal irony, symbolism, and social cohesion.

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 by Shirley Jackson is very similar to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games is a seventy-four-year-old lottery that selects twenty-four kids, as young as thirteen, and sends them into a rink to fight to the death. The Lottery is about a lottery that has been going on for more than seventy years, where the village selects one person to stone to death. The two stories may have different plot lines, but they have similar themes, including tradition, a dystopian society, and protagonists standing up for justice. Both of these stories are very akin and hold a very harsh lesson.

Traditions are widespread among many different people and cultures; It is an explanation for acting without thinking. Not all traditions are a good thing, though, and blindly following them can lead to harsh consequences. The villagers in a small town in “The Lottery” gather together annually to participate in this tradition, where one person in the town is randomly chosen in a drawing to be violently stoned to death by citizens. It has been around for seventy-seven years and everyone partakes in it. People always attend, showing the importance of tradition amongst the society. However, in the short story, “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses many literary devices to show that traditions are not always meant to be followed.

There are a lot of characters that play a huge role in the outcome of the story. Tessie Hutchinson, who was thrilled about the lottery, was the one who gets the paper with a black dot. She always wanted to participate each year but this year she wasn’t so happy about it. She complained because her family’s names were also included in the lottery drawing. Bill Hutchinson, Tessie’s husband, was the one who drew the lottery, in the end. Even though Tessie complained and protested about the lottery, he acknowledged it because it was apart of the town’s tradition. Old Man Warner has partaken in 77 lotteries over the years. He is also known as the oldest person in the Town. He believes that the lottery cleans people’s sin and allows them to be kind. He feels as if there shouldn’t be a change, and the lottery ceremony should remain as apart of town tradition. Mr. Summers, has no children, is the guy who leads the lottery ceremony. His job is to make the papers and announce the drawn lottery recipient. Mr. Harry Graves, the postmaster, assists Mr. Summers in preparing for the lottery. The children and other families of the town are secondary characters in the story. Their main role is to collect rocks and cause ruckus during the lottery ceremony.

To begin with, both stories are trying to keep the population down. In “The Lottery,” they have a tradition annually, which is the Lottery, and in the lottery, every year someone from the village gets stoned to death by the lottery, or the raffle. In the story, it states, “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. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers…” This can prove that Tessie Hutchinson was elected to get stoned to death, which displays how every year, someone is killed. In “The Hunger Games,” once yearly, there is a day called Reaping Day, like when someone is selected every year to be killed. In the story

The theme in both stories share similarities of government control. The citizens in The Lottery don’t have a choice and are forced to participate in the traditions. This shows the control that the government has over them. This is a very important theme because it exists in any dystopian world. The Hunger Games is no outlier to this theme. The Hunger Games has government control in the form of the game itself. The government keeps the population in check with the game, instilling both fear and also entertainment. The government also has total control of the districts because the citizens interest throughout the game. Both stories are the result of total government control.

What do you think "Then Lottery" by Shirley Jackson means? I could bet some money that you are wrong. What about "First they came" by Martin Niemoller, you know what that means? The plot in "The Lottery" is, that you should speak up even if it’s the "wrong" thing to do. The plot in "First They Came" is, "justice & indifference" -Martin Niemoller. The three claims I have are justice & indifference, standing up may not be the easiest, & following the crowd (peer pressure).

“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.

When specific traditions within a civilization are blindly followed, the consequences may be dire and the society as a whole can be negatively impacted. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both highlight the consequences that come along with condoning the traditions that were introduced into a culture. By using arbitrary rules, inequitable odds, and blindly following traditions in these pieces of literary work create an environment for a hostile social ritual and ceremony. The societies displayed in these pieces of literature share a tradition of cruel and murderous behavior which jeopardizes the livelihood of the people who reside in these areas, specifically the youth. Although both of the traditions

What if every year, in your town you had to stone one of your loved ones? What if you were the one chosen? Is this an okay thing to do? In my opinion it is not because in the story they believe that the stoning of people helps their crops.This is a bad thing to do and a person’s life is more valuable than crops. The story’s many themes shows how unfair the lottery is and how it is evolution helps understand the fear that Mrs.Hutchinson shows at the end of the story.

The theme following the crowd can have disastrous consequences means that doing something that everybody else is doing can lead to something you don’t want to happen. The short story the “Lottery” is about a town in 1948 that had a tradition of killing one person every year. One year a women named Tessie was chosen and she was stoned to death. The poem “First they came” is about pastor that lived during the Holocaust that never spoke out against the Germans, he even supported them. So he was surprised when the Germans took him. He eventually escaped and felt regretful that he hadn’t spoken out when he had the chance. Both the “Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First they came” by Martin Nemoller deal with the idea that following the crowd can have disastrous consequences but they do so in different ways.

Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ caused major controversy when it first published in 1948 and received criticism due to its brutal representation of rituals in American small towns. Although it might seem impossible, events such as the one seen in ‘The Lottery” are scattered all throughout history, from the Mayans to Nazi Germany with no guarantee that humanity will not relapse into the practice in the future. This is a vision that Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games brought forth.