Conformity In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

     The Lottery, a short story by the nonconformist author Shirley Jackson, represents communities, America, the world, and conformist society as a whole by using setting and most importantly symbolism with her inventive, cryptic writing style. It was written in 1948, roughly three years after the liberation of a World War II concentration camp Auschwitz. Even today, some people deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Jackson shows through the setting of the story, a small, close knit town, that even though a population can ignore evil, it is still prevalent in society (for example: the Harlem Riots; the terrorist attacks on September 11; the beating of Rodney King.)

Would you stone your neighborhood to death for the sake of tradition? Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery in 1948 to tell a story about how savage people can be for tradition. The story is about a small town who has a yearly lottery and the winner gets stoned to death by their neighbors. The thought is that if you have a lottery, then you will have good crops that season. This short story tells the tale of poor Tessie Hutchinson who is stoned by her own town, her son helps too. In the short story The Lottery, Shirley Jackson argues that all people, regardless of how civilized they may seem, are capable of great evil by contrasting seemingly pleasant and relatable details of the town with the shocking barbarity of their tradition.

Throughout history, stories have been made in order for the general public to question society. Each story has a deeper meaning behind it besides the characters and events that take place. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” Jackson begins her story by describing the location of a small village where “the people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock” (Jackson, 1). From Jackson’s brief description of the village, the audience can come to an understanding that things in this village are ordinary; a modern day example of such a village can be seen as a suburban setting. A suburban setting brings connotations of traditions, no change, and town unity. Those connotations

In the Lottery by Shirley Jackson there are many key ideas about humanity, how valuable life is, and other controversial ideas. This story has started furious debates all across North America about the cruel horrors mankind is capable of in either fact or fiction and how many people were in shock and horror claiming mankind was not capable of things in the story. In Lottery story a young woman was brutally murdered because of her bad luck, Bill Hutchinson had picked the unlucky black spot meaning him and his family were going to pick from the box and whomever got the paper with the black spot would be stoned to death. Tessie was the one who had the spot so the whole town, friends, family and even her little boy all turned and stoned her to death.

In Shirley Jackson’s short story entitled “The Lottery”, obedience is expressed as members of this fictional society participate in an annual stoning. Villagers assemble on a beautiful summer’s day, caring out conversation as they await the annual lottery. Once the drawing concludes, the true nature of the lottery is revealed and a randomly selected member is then stoned to death. American psychologist, Stanley Milgram, conducted controversial social psychology experiments on obedience during his professorship at Yale University. The Milgram experiment measured the willingness of study participants, a socially diverse range of male applicants, to obey morally conflicting acts instructed by an authoritative figure. Participants were under the impression they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they administer electric shock to a “learner” as a form of corrective action. Fake electric shocks progressively increased to fatal levels of electricity if actually administered. Unexpectedly, the experiment found that a majority of participants would reluctantly obey the instructions of fatal harm. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Stanley Milgram’s behavioral study of obedience suggest societal influences drive individuals to conformity, findings of the Milgram experiments reflect Jackson’s characters’ behaviors.

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published on June 26, 1948. The story was initially met with negative critical reception due to its violent nature and portrayal of the potentially dangerous nature of human society. It was even banned in some countries. However, “The Lottery” is now widely accepted as a classic American short story and is used in classrooms throughout the country.

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, it can be very dangerous to follow traditions blindly without knowing about the horrible consequences. When one follows traditions and laws and never questions or seeks to understand the reason for them, the inevitable outcome often brings sorrow. Indeed blind devotion to complying with rules that destroys the human spirit by removing choice, and continuing rituals with dark consequences, and punishing anyone who objects to following tradition. Complying with rules that helps lead to destroying the human spirit is dangerous because individuals should always have the choice to follow those rules. The blind devotion of the village participating in the town’s yearly lottery is the clear example why all rules aren’t always positive. Rituals can be looked upon as positive but they also can have a negative connotation when they lead to dangerous consequences. The village in the story has a ritual every year to hold a lottery, where the winner is stoned to death and this is a clear example how a ritual can be viewed negatively. Traditions are beliefs passed down between generations of a family or culture. They are things we do by choice because they are enjoyable and meaningful for the people involved. Traditions in the story have a dark side to it because the tradition in this village is to kill one of members of the village using a lottery system. The dark side of “The Lottery”, is substantial with many down falls of

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was published in “The New Yorker” on June 26, 1948. It is considered as one of the most disturbing short stories of modern America. The plot in “The Lottery” is not clear for the reader until the end of the story, and this setting gives a big jump when the story reveals the real truth. In “The Lottery,” one of the main characters, Tessie Hutchison, gets stoned to death by her family and friends as the result of the annual event of the lottery. The tradition, characters struggle and the inevitable death of a person each year gives an insight of the tradition that the town has performed for so many years.

Would you blindly follow tradition, even if it's you who finds out the hard way? What if that tradition ment one death to the community, and that one death was you. While this idea of blindly following tradition is shown very while in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Shirley Jackson does a great way of showing that following tradition blindly can lead to something you never would have thought to happen. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the best short story because of the author's attention to details, the great symbolism, and the irony used.

Many times people do not want traditions to be changed even if they are not beneficial. Communities rely on traditions to keep the people in the town active for many more generations even if the rituals are not ethical. The story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is an example of a community that knows there is a problem with “the lottery” but is unwilling to do anything about the situation. Jackson shows the readers how many characters never want the tradition to change because they are afraid of what might happen. This story gives the reader a better understanding of how much tradition means to a society even if the ritual kills people annually.

"The Lottery," a short story written by Shirley Jackson, is a tale about an inhumane

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."

“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.

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” is about a bizarre ritual performed in a town in which the townspeople proceed to follow every year. In a black, worn box they place all the names of the community. Once all the names are placed inside, Mr. Summers draws a name. After the name is chosen, this member will be stoned to death by the others in the community. Tessie Hutchinson in the story tries to reject the repetitive tradition of the lottery.

One could make a rather convincing argument that Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery is one of the most famous short stories written in the 20th-century. For me at least, I believe I have read the story three times in school before I read it again for this class. While it has had an impact each time I have read it, the twist of the end really only does shock the reader the first time. I still remember the shock of my sixth grade self at reading the town turn against and begin to stone Tessie Hutchinson.