The Death Of Convenience
(Or How I Learned to Hate the Lottery)
More often than not these days, I find myself stuck in a line at a gas station – a seemingly endless queue in which time advances at a snail's pace, and stress levels skyrocket. Will I make that meeting? Will the grocery store close before I get there? What is the meaning of life? All of these questions share a brief moment in the spotlight before being gaffed by the lovely attitude of the cashier whom you have waited so long to see, hand over that ten dollar bill, and get back to civilized life. What ever happened to the “convenience” store? Has the meaning of the word surreptitiously changed to exclude the long lines and ridiculous wait times? Or has something else emerged? Something so sinister and wholly evil that it can piss off a minister on Sunday, or bring a young mother with screaming children to
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For example, when that one fortunate soul wins a measly five dollars on her scratch-off ticket, and proceeds to “roll over” her newly acquired cash to by more tickets - which she immediately scratches off after purchase. How lucky she would be to win a second time after buying five more tickets with her five dollars. Now she can buy five more, and repeat the process until she doesn't win, at which time she makes her exit and casually walks past everyone who she has just robbed of 10 minutes of life. Remember the nicotine-deprived young man? The veins in his forehead are now thrombosed, and he exhibits an inhuman amount of self control as the winner passes him by. Meanwhile, you look ahead to find that the customer behind her has decided she would like a lottery ticket too. The vicious cycle is never ending, and you are now late for your important meeting. You look around for job applications because after this, you may need one. You also grab an Abba-Zabba and a Yoohoo because you may be here awhile
The Lottery point of view is third person (objective). These means the narrator is not a character in the story. Is telling us the characters thoughts and feelings. Also, the narrator shows the process of how is getting perform the lottery.
Shirley Jackson takes great care in creating a setting for the story, The Lottery. She gives the reader a sense of comfort and stability from the very beginning. It begins, "clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." The setting throughout The Lottery creates a sense of peacefulness and tranquility, while portraying a typical town on a normal summer day.
A lottery is a process that is entirely controlled by chance, whether there is loss or success is dependent on luck. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story about a small town that holds an annual lottery. The lottery itself is an age long tradition that started so long ago the ritual had been mostly forgotten. The villages around them have shut down the lottery, because of how old and forgotten the lottery is. This shows how people will blindly follow tradition no matter the age of it.(Jackson, “Read The Lottery...”).
In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the story begins on a sunny day that imposes gossip and frenzy around the town. In this location, they conduct a “lottery” that involves the families of the town to go into a drawing. Once the drawing is done, the family that is chosen is forced to commence into another lottery between themselves. The winner of the lottery is used as a sacrifice for the town and is pelted by stones thrown from the community, including children. Furthermore, the basis of “The Lottery” has to do with psychological problems and influence. Psychoanalysis is built upon Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology, which asserts that the human mind is affected by their “unconscious that is driven by their desires and fears”
Although two different stories, with multiple differences in conflict and setting, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell bear multiple similarities as well. Both stories demonstrate how humans are portrayed as evil vs. good. Each story depicts a protagonist exhibiting conflict with another human or humans. One ends on a dark gloomy path for the protagonist while the other results in a victory for the protagonist.
This quote proved to be a crucial theme of the book which is in order to fully understand the world and the others living in it, we have to consider things from different perspectives. Because everyone has a different view on just about everything it often lead to chaos but it also led to many great discoveries. As human beings that constantly thrive to be better we can not limit ourselves by only viewing things in a certain way because in the end that would get us nowhere. For example in Maycomb many of its citizens never attempted to grasp how racism affected many “colored folks” due to that they had to live in a hateful world. Finally I concluded that Maycomb was in a sense divided as a result of the discrimination that existed within
There are many Americans and people all over the world that live their lives following traditions that are passed down from one generation to another. A tradition can be as simple as cooking a recipe to how you raise your children and holiday traditions. Culture plays a significant role in how people live their day to day lives. In Shirley Jacksons “The Lottery” the people that lived in the town follow a tradition every year. It's easy to understand why Shirley Jackson’s Lottery caused controversy when it was published shortly after World War II in 1948. The Lottery has been dramatized, televised and turned into a ballet. It is taught in high schools and colleges. (Whittier). The Lottery held many questions about traditions that have
In life, people have a tendency to ruin a good thing while it’s going. People become overwhelmed with the joy and fulfillment and begin to react irresponsible. For instance, a great thing such as winning can result into something horrible. Winning the lottery not only can bring happiness into someone’s life, but as well cause their life to be a complete nightmare. When a person goes from being considerably poor to having millions of dollars, it impacts their lives to a great extent by causing them to become unreasonable with their winnings, quit their jobs, or just lose touch with reality. Truth is winning unthinkable amounts of money causes unimaginable stress on lives of people not accustomed to it resulting in a positive event turning
Never blindly follow traditions because something really bad can happen, like punishment. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a lottery that villagers commit once a year and they pick a card out of a box and if they draw a black dot they have to draw again band if they get the dot twice they get the "reward". The “First they came” by Martin Niemoller is about this guy who doesn’t stand up for others but when the guy came for him and he had no one to stand up for him when the time came for him.
Ronald Knox’s commandments for detective fiction ultimately function as a guide for what he believes constitutes a fair and satisfying instance of the genre, each charge serving to avoid a non-fulfilling resolution for the reader. Knox’s rules in combination work to this end and the ambitions of this essay are to explore works from Poe and Christie in relation to these commandments. Poe, considered the instigator of the detective fiction genre through ‘the Dupin tales’ penned and published works that would assist in defining its conventions, providing a prototype for future authors. Christie was a beneficiary of these earlier works and attempted to ‘modernize’ the pre-established ‘conventions of detective fiction’ , in an era in which the
In this essay I will be doing a compare and contrast between the two stories “The Lottery” by Chris Alani and “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Both stories were good, and had a deep meaning behind both stories that leaves the readers wondering why the stories had to end in the way they did. Now I’ll start off by giving a summary of both stories so you can know and understand my point of view better.
Over the years many critics have wrote articles on Shirley Jackson's numerous works. Many critics had much to say about Jackson's most famous short story, "The Lottery". Her insights and observations about man and society are disturbing; and in the case of "The Lottery," they are shocking. "The themes themselves are not new, evil cloaked in seeming good, prejudice and hypocrisy, loneliness and frustration, psychological studies of minds that have slipped the bonds of reality" (Friedman). Literary critic, Elizabeth Janeway wrote that, " 'The Lottery' makes its effect without having to state a moral about humanity's need to deflect the knowledge of its own death on a victim. That uneasy consciousness is
I do believe that an unsetteling ritual like the one told in The Lottery could happen in America today. This story insinuated that the ritual was done for two possible reasons. The first reason being to lessen the crime rate in their village, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example....eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys". The second reason being to lessen their population, " Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued. had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into he black box". Both of these experiences are problems America has been trying to fix as of recently.
In today’s society we perceive the lottery as being a great fortune brought down upon you by Lady Luck. It is a serendipitous event, even if the person has done nothing to earn it. One would never see the lottery as an unfortunate occasion that occurred in your life because it is supposed to bring prosperity into your life. Also, one would not dare to think that winning the lottery would bring such repercussions as injury or death. In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the author could have used Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson as the town’s scapegoat due to their reluctance to change traditions, her horrible work ethic, and minority status as a woman.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.