Desensitization of Murder in The Lottery Essay

     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

In the story, "the lottery," by Shirley Jackson. The author claims about the lottery in a unique way. She creates a very shocking and horrifying situation through the use of characterization, setting, and the theme of the individual society. She writes as if the events taking place are common to any town, she also talks about how the village lottery completes in a brutal murder each year. Village people have strange rituals that show how dangerous tradition can be when innocent villager believe or follow it blindly. As I was reading this story they keep talking about the lottery in a harmless way because before we get to know about kind of lottery they are organizing, the villager and their preparation seems harmless.

Their quest to hunt and kill the other led to nothing of importance or progression, they became trapped in peril as the force of mother nature became a bigger conflict than their ultimate enemy. In The Lottery the characters are emotionless towards others, they feel no empathy or remorse. As Tessie was put to death the characters remained calm, sort of relieved it wasn’t them on the other side of the pebbles being put to death by the “community” because of a draw. Even Tessie Hutchinson wasn’t one to complain before her fate of being stoned to death had become reality. After it was her who was chosen, she objected the tradition. The villagers are narcissistic and completely oblivious to the transgressive June 27th tradition. This is a direct insight into how people in our real world operate. We only seek action and justice once the problem begins to affect us firsthand. The lack of empathy prevents us from creating an amicable world.

The author presents this information in a way to hide the gruesome event that is going to take place. When Jackson describes the kids gathering rocks, she makes it sound more like a game versus a preparation for an awful act. As the story continues, Jackson reveals the anxious tension amongst the crowd. For example, when Jackson Watson was asked if he was drawing this year, the author mentions his nervous blinking and his timid actions (Jackson 239). The story also includes the regretful feelings of Mrs. Dunbar when she stated that she would be drawing for her husband (Jackson 239). This tension is not something the crowd can get over in a day. When two of the housewives gossiped, they mentioned how they had just gotten over last year's lottery (Jackson 240). In society today, winning the lottery is a positive and lucky event in someone's life. After seeing the natural, but worried action shown by each citizen, the reader can infer how negative this lottery is. In this situation, small children are willing to throw stones at their mom, and are happy when they do not have to see the dot on

“The Lottery” also depicts a wonderful and pleasing New England village. The day is depicted to be bright, with fragrant flowers and green lawns. The children are fidgety and boisterous do to the ending of school for the summer. The story talks about the children and what they’re doing while they wait for the adults to gather, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones,” the act of gathering stones seems like

It is the matter-of-fact tone and benign cadence of the narrator that sets the atmosphere for this story, and matches perfectly with the perfunctory attitude the villagers have toward the lottery. The narrator is going about his or her business -- explaining details, recording conversations, revealing the history of the lottery -- while the villagers are going on with the routine business of the lottery. This banality lulls the reader into a lowered sense of expectation, while the story slowly builds to the climax.

In the story, " The Lottery", the reader is introduced to an almost dreamlike village,where the children stack rocks up in neat piles as their parents watch them without a care in the world. Upon further inspection of the strange introduction, one can infer that the purpose of this was to foreshadow the gruesome end of the story. The story revolves around an annual lottery where the males of the family must draw a ballot, and whoever wins has to have their family draw in order to determine who "wins". The term winning in this story is a nice way of saying sanctioned killing and violence.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a satirical short story which points out many flaws in humanity. While touching on many themes, the text ultimately leads one to ponder the selfishness of human nature. The overall theme of selfishness is expressed many times throughout the story, most notable being the villagers eagerness to murder in order to preserve themselves, Tessie’s willingness to have her own children killed to save herself, and Old Man Warners unwavering belief that his way, the lottery, is inherently better than that of the “young people” who are abolishing the tradition.

Nowadays, when we know death does not help crops grow, but the village does it anyway. The lottery is conducted from a sense of tradition and commitment to the past. The villagers are not sure what the lottery was exactly like back then “Because so much of the ritual has been forgotten or discarded” (Page 49, line 93). The original ritual might have been different, or just not favorable by the town, but he most painful part, the death of a person, was kept as a way of honoring the past. In addition, we can see how the younger , more modern generation is okay with this because the town elders encourage it as well. It is so encouraged, that “someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (Page 58, line 421). These villagers are making a

This is a totally and utterly inhumane tradition that I don’t seem to agree with at all. The fact that children are involved and also find pleasure into stoning someone to death makes me wonder what kind of example these people are setting for their children. I can’t imagine a tradition like this in this modern era. The author shows that the villagers was not so knowledgeable about the lottery, however, they participated to keep the tradition going. The ending did come as a surprise to me because I thought the children were gathering stones to play regular children’s game. I Think Shirley Jackson is trying to say that these people show that they were helpless to changes because nothing was forcing them to keep this tradition, the villagers

All the villagers follow the tradition “represented by the black box,”, even though other towns have already stopped performing the lottery without any (revealed) consequences (Jackson 510). This shows that they are not rationally thinking through the tradition that they follow. They are committing murder, but choose to ignore their inhumane actions simply because “’there’s always been a lottery’” (Jackson 513). Even the woman that was chosen to get stoned to death at the end of the story, Tessie Hutchinson, wasn’t opposed to the tradition at all.

Written by Shirley Jackson in 1948 is a short story titled “The Lottery”, which takes place in a small, unnamed village that represents any town. Every year on June 27th, the village holds a lottery in the square. The lottery is unusual and has an ironic outcome; the lottery has a winner, but in reality this winner is a loser. Although they always gather for the lottery, the villagers never question the purpose. The theme of this story is nobody questions injustice until it negatively affects them.

The story begins with a sense of liberation. It's a beautiful summer day, the children are out of school, and the villagers have begun assembling in the square to hold a lottery. It is unclear exactly what the prize of this lottery is going to be, and this mystery persists throughout the story. This is the first obvious moment of discord we see in the story, as Tess Hutchinson disagrees with the result of the lottery. Here in the denouement, all suspense is resolved. The villagers ignore Tess's protests as they begin to select the stones they're going to use against here. Suddenly, the penny drops for us, the readers: this lottery winds up in the violent death of its winner. All that's left is the execution. "'It isn't fair, it isn't right,'

Furthermore, it is evident that the children are born into this practice. Old man Warner, the archetypal tradition keeper in the short story, expresses the importance of tradition in the town as another resident talks about how other villages have already given up the lottery: “pack of crazy fools...first thing you’d know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery” (Jackson 27). With this persistent idea that keeping tradition is exceedingly important, children do not know any other way to live. Self preservation becomes the only way they know how to survive as they blindly follow this practice. These selfish instincts are what lead children to treat even their own family and friends as insignificant. As Tessie is being sacrificed, her desperation for them to cease is obvious as she “[is] in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers [move] in on her” (Jackson 30). The hostile nature of this encounter reveals the genuine feelings of the villagers. The elders eagerness persuades the children to behave similarly. Throughout the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a belligerent community is present due to the appalling actions of the adults.

It is unknown how Jackson could write about such a harsh and terrible incident before the world could be categorized as unsafe. “It has been noted that Jackson saw herself as a psychic even as a young girl,” (Hicks). Jackson was a gifted writer and many people looked into her other writings after this story was published. “The Lottery” was a shocking, yet wonderful story contains an exceeding amount of irony and symbolism for the relatively short length. The irony and symbolism play a significant for this story; however, the most important feature is the theme. The main theme Shirley Jackson portrays in this story is the civilized and normal behavior about violence. It is a foreshadowing message to the future, which is now the present. It can also be known as hypocrisy, because citizens are pretending to be okay with actions due to a tradition. A tradition that should be ended, and never be