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Analytical Essay On The Lottery

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Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story that shows the most shocking elements of humanity. The ending surprises the reader by coming out of nowhere, and shows the brutality that people are capable of. New Yorker Readers were shocked to the point of outrage at the time of its publishing. They were both certain that it was “perverted” and “gratuitously disagreeable,” but also that they didn’t “know what it’s about” (Franklin). Jackson herself hoped the story would “shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). This shock is very effective, and is in part possible because of how Jackson portrays her characters. She sets the story up to shock the reader by leaving only slight hints, but also by effectively showing how the characters themselves see the event. Jackson highlights the commonplace nature of the event. She portrays the event as a dated ritual, and explains the ways that the people of the town resist it. T ending feels like a surprise because it is brutal and because the characters themselves resist understanding the ritual. Jackson makes the true meaning of the event invisible to everyone except the readers and the victims themselves. The most important part of keeping the brutality of the Lottery invisible is to emphasize the ritualistic and commonplace nature of the event. Jackson includes a lot of clues about how the ritual has been normalized over the years. She shows this in both the manner of the ritual itself and the manner of the people. The lottery starts as a casual gathering with no indications of its meaning. It is said to take “less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner” (Jackson 25). This description is very casual, it implies that the lottery is a light business that could take place between the morning chores and lunch. It does not have any gravity to it. Jackson also describes the lottery as taking place just as “the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program” (Jackson 25). This puts the lottery on the same level as any other casual social gathering, and compares it even to

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