Atavistic Nature Of The Lottery

    "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

Tradition is a large part of life today, but decades ago it was almost a way of life and if it was not followed there were stiff consequences. The story is misleading by the title because of the normal thought of a lottery is something positive or a giveaway. The story is quite the opposite of the common thought. The main point that Jackson shows in “The Lottery” is that people can be involved with such a violent act and think nothing of it. In the story all the people are happy, “they stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.”(Jackson 124). The tradition the village seams at first to be a happy scene, but later learn that it is a terrible event that is a

As the plot of the stories unfolds, the greater influence of violent tensions become evident. In The Lottery, people follow the tradition despite its cruelty and absurdity. Although the ritual of the lottery is brutal, the dwellers of the village do not seem to see how barbaric it is because “there’s always been a lottery” (Jackson, 1982, p. 118). Nevertheless, the tensions grow when the lottery begin and every citizen is awaiting for its end. The climatic moment of the story grows when the reader discovers that Tess

“The Lottery” is more ambiguous with its setting, as the exact location and year where the story takes place are omitted. The rather simple character names, and the lack of any overt accents when the characters speak make it easy to imagine the story happening almost any time and place in America. In a small nondescript village, the inhabitants practice a lottery ritual where the “winner” is stoned to death in the end. No one in town questions the absurdity of murdering one of their own. They even go as far as to include children in the stoning, showing just how far their adherence

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is about a town of 300 people who have an annual lottery to decide who is stoned to death (stones thrown at them until they die). The purpose of the lottery is for good luck with the harvest and crops. The townspeople only remember the purpose and tidbits of the traditional lottery. Because it is a long-standing tradition, the town is too afraid to change anything or give up the lottery entirely.

Over time, the severity of inconceivable actions is desensitized to members of the community as the traditions continue to be practiced throughout generations. In “The Lottery”, the story opens with children “selecting the smoothest and roundest stones” (43) in preparation for the stoning, as if it was part of an ordinary routine. At a young age, children tend to learn and mimic the actions of those around them. They listen to voices of authority like Old Man Warner’s as he ridicules the idea of other villages abolishing the lottery, calling them, “Pack of crazy fools” (48), and saying how, “they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves … there’s always been a lottery” (48). Following the influence of the elders, the children fail to question the

Once upon a time there was a little village. In this village three hundred people happily farmed and played and went about their business. The children went to school while the men cut wood or farmed, and the women cooked and cleaned. Every summer in June each of villagers took part in the traditional lottery drawing and one villager was picked for the prize – a stoning. In 1948, Shirley Jackson published this short story known as “The Lottery,” in The New York Times. The story’s plot shocked readers all over America as they learned of the horror happening in such a quaint town. Jackson purposely set this tragic event in this innocent setting to emphasize humanity’s cruelty. Using her appalling short story, The Lottery,

In a dystopian village, “A stone hit her in the side of the head. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed and then they were upon her” (7). Keeping the tradition of the lottery alive means that the members of Tessie’s family, her friends, and the villagers will stone her to death. Tessie Hutchinson is the unluckiest person this year, having won the lottery. The theme of “The Lottery” is that there are some traditions that should not be kept alive.

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

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” a small village is preparing for an annual drawing, a tradition carried out for generations. During this ritual, the head of each household draws a blank piece of paper out of a black box. One piece of paper is marked with a single black dot and if chosen, the outcome is having the winner’s entire household draw out of the box. Whoever chooses the black dot out of the household is stoned to death by the entire village. In this instance, a husband wins to which his wife protests, and then she is the ultimate victim who is sacrificed. This story includes many literary elements like foreshadowing, warning of a future event, symbolism, symbols used in the story to represent ideas,and irony, when the contrary to what is expected to happen, occurs. Jackson uses foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony to prove the theme that it is foolish and barbaric to blindly follow tradition.

The spectacle referenced in the title of the short story "The Lottery" refers to an unquestioned ritual that takes place in a small farming town in New England each year which requires all members of the community to draw sheets of paper to determine a winner. Unfortunately, the person who is deemed the winner of the lottery must be stoned to death due to a misguided and ancient belief that this will encourage a plentiful harvest. The story commences on a morning in late June with the local residents of this village exhibiting a nervous, yet excited mood. Children gather stones as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event. Old Man

     The plot as a whole in “The Lottery” is filled with ironic twists. The whole idea of a lottery is to win something, and the reader is led to believe that the winner will receive some prize, when in actuality they will be stoned to death by the rest of the villagers. The villagers act very nonchalant

    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

Without the lottery, however, there would not be a murder for the villagers to take pleasure in. Seymore Lainhoff supports this image of savagery by saying that the theme of the lottery is that “beneath our civilized surface, patterns of savage behavior are at work” (1). The villagers continue the tradition because the lottery gives them an outlet for the meanness that they have a fondness for. Helen Nebeker makes this claim in her essay “The Lottery: Symbolic Tour de Force”, the lottery ritual does not just provide “a channel to release repressed cruelties” but it “actually serves to generate the cruelties” (102). With every lottery that passes, their need for cruelty grows. As this need grows it makes them crave more.

Throughout the duration of this class, I had the opportunity to encounter a great deal of fantastic examples of literature. The stories were as similar as they were different, each one with a unique premise but somehow also reflective of one another. Perhaps it is be accident, or more likely it is because the stories are a part of the fabric of our nation and the American condition. The stories are of their respective times while also being able to fairly and accurately critique American society, culture, and values. From capitalism to America’s changing thoughts on morality throughout the decades, the writings were introspective to the story of our nation.