Analysis of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Americans were moving back to a time where they wanted life to be simple and orderly. There was also a need to go back to traditional values and a need for conformity (Miss Cellania). While people enjoyed seeing the Cleveland Indians win the World Series, The Philadelphia Eagles win the NFL and while they were being entertained by beautiful women like Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth (PCM Entertainment and Trivia Network) Jackson was entertaining a different audience through her short story. It was interesting that many people were upset with Jackson about this story. One reason was because her publisher spread a rumor that Jackson was a practicing witch (Miss Cellania). Although Jackson dabbled in mysticism and read tarot cards, the idea that she was a witch was a joke. “The Lottery” was frightening during that time and it still is today. Jackson wanted to show what happened when people blindly followed a tradition just because it was a tradition. “The Lottery revealed an uncomfortable truth about the human psyche and, in doing so, became a classic piece of American Literature” (Miss Celinnia).

We will try to dig first on the connection of Shirley Jackson to her writing “The Lottery”. Shirley Jackson was born in 1916 in San Francisco, California. One of her masterpieces was "The Lottery," the most argumentative piece and well known story about a village that occurs in once year death practice. The New Yorker published the short story of Jackson at the year 1948, "The Lottery."

Shirley Jackson also utilizes literary devices to good effect in “The Lottery,” especially that of symbolism. By keeping the setting devoid of any identifying details, Jackson frees the reader to imagine that it could be any place. The only constraints that the author places on her readers’ creativity are that the town is decidedly rural, perhaps narrowing the critique to the cultural scene most frequently associated with small town America. Other symbols include the box from which the lottery slips are drawn (an old and black object which heralds death), stoning as a method of execution (a particularly old and excruciating way to kill someone), and ritual itself (a series of often ill contemplated actions for which one needs no particular reason to follow). All of these, with their marked reference to age, clearly refer to tradition.

“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

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

Tessie Hutchinson being one to protest the lottery when her husband wasn’t given enough time to choose, yet he did nothing for her when she was chosen. For the sake of tradition, these people are giving up the lives of their friends and family, their loved ones. Multiple times in the story, it shows that people are eager to finish the lottery and go back about their business. Some examples include a mother wishing her son could draw in the lottery for her if he were of age. No one in this town wants to die themselves, and yet are still laying down the lives of others to continue this twisted tradition.

Shirley Jackson's stories always seem to center on one thing: almost every story is about a protagonist's discovering or failing to discover or successfully ignoring an alternate way of perceiving a set of circumstances or the world. Often a change in the character's perspective leads to terror, anxiety, neurosis, or even loss of their identity. Jackson's most notable work "The Lottery" is a ghastly story that tells of the way people blindly follow traditions and conform to their society. She also published many short stories in periodicals such as the New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, The Hudson Review, and The Yale Review. She also published novels such as The

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.

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.

According to Helen E. Nebeker, most acknowledge the energy of The Lottery, admitting that the psychological stun of the ritual murder in a modern, rural small-town cannot be easily overlooked. Virgil Scott, for instance, says, “the story leaves me uneasy because of the author's use of incidental symbolism: the black box, the forgotten tuneless chant, the ritual salute to assure the entire recreation of the procedure of the lottery forget to serve the story as they may have.” At that point, they indicate fundamental weakness by acknowledging that Jackson has preferred to give no answer to her story, but it leaves the meaning to our imagination, allowing a good deal of flexibility in our interpretation, while yet demanding that everything in the story has been obtained to assure us how we are to 'take' the ending events in the story. Maybe the critical conflict depicted above comes from failure to see that The Lottery really intertwines two stories and subjects into a fictional vehicle. The obvious, easily discovered story shows up in the facts, wherein members of a small town meet to decide who will be the next victim of the annual savagery. The symbolic hints which develop into a second, sub rosa story becomes apparent as early as the fourth word of the story when the date of June 27th alerts us to the season of the summertime with all its connotation of ancient ritual. From the symbolic development of the black box, the story shifts quickly to climax.

I believe that the characters in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson are so willing to stone innocents to death is because they believe that it is for a good purpose. It is very similar to how the subjects of the Milgram experiment were alright – on a moral level – with shocking an innocent for the sake of scientific advancements. The citizens are not being ordered to continue with the lottery – Old Man Warner and Mr. Summers never explicitly say that continuing the lottery out of the question – but the two do imply their support for the lottery and its results. For whatever reason, the citizens genuinely believe that the lottery is worth continuing, despite its direct effects in the deaths of those who were once held dear to them. Similarly to

One of my favorite pieces of writing happens to be one that we read in my freshman year at Titusville High School. It is often a required reading for many schools. The work is “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. It’s a very strange, violent, and impacting short story to the readers. Jackson was alive from 1916 to 1965. The short story was published by The New Yorker and is claimed as the most widely acknowledged short story of the twentieth century. It caused the greatest quantity of mail that the magazine ever received ---before or since---and the majority of it was hateful ("Shirley Jackson's Bio." Shirley Jackson's Bio. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Sept. 2015.). It is not a surprise that people would detest the work so much given the time period.

The winner of the lottery has chosen a card with a black dot. This suggests the encompassing villager will stone them to death! Shirley Jackson utilizes numerous components in the lottery through the used of symbolism, mood and

In her short story, “The Lottery”, Sheila Jackson invites us into the square of a small village on a warm summer day (247). It is not just any day. It is the 27th of June; an annually anticipated day for this community (Jackson, 247). The scene is described to depict a pre-technology era, most likely resembling an early American town. They have postal service, a school, and a bank, but no mention of devices, such as telephones, or modern transportation is made. (Jackson, 247). It is possible that the author wanted to represent the very basic elements in our humanity when choosing the setting.

She was fascinated with the paranormal and even voodoo and witchcraft. Jackson had a strange fascination of the psychology of human beings as well. She noticed the "disturbed, disposed, misunderstood, or thwarting" characteristics of people and of people to each other. Jackson was incredibly good at picking out the impurities of the human psyche and exploiting them to a great extent (Lethem 1). The village portrayed in "The Lottery" is said to be the same village where Jackson resided. She was a mother of four, married to Stanley Edgar Hyman. She was somewhat of a social outcast in her town. Eventually, her psyche was reshaped by the hostility and persecution of the villagers of the town (Lethem 4). Even before she moved to the town, Jackson had an obvious split in her personality. One side of her was a fearful, shy one which she brought to life in many of her stories. The other side of her was almost a direct contrast, being expulsive and bitter. This side of Jackson drank and smoked, rejected society, and this is the side of her that was fascinated by magic and voodoo. This is the side of her that is represented by Tessie Huchinson in "The Lottery" (Lethem 3). This story in particular best depicts Jackson's view on people. A reader can see that she views life as irony and notices the evils and darkness that lurks within every individual (Hilton 250). "To put it most simply, Shirley Jackson wrote about the mundane evils