In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the end of the story was disturbing but interesting at the same time. One can ask many questions about the story once the reading is complete. For me, the story left me confused as why a village would kill one person in a sacrifice to have good crops. Shirley Jackson is a great author but it could be argued that the villagers blindly following tradition is an unfair idea and the villagers continuing this tradition will lead to heartbreak.
To begin with, is everyone enthusiastic about the lottery? Yes and no because, when the children piled stones for the lottery, they were laughing and making jokes about it. But when the lottery actually happened they didn’t understand that they were going to stone
"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
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
There are many things that people do every day without questioning why they do them. These are our habits and traditions, and though for the most part they are unimportant they can be a crucial part of our culture and our interactions with each other. Sometimes there are traditions that can cause harm or are morally unacceptable. What should be done in this case? Edmund Burke, a nineteenth century politician and author, argues that it is best to stick with tradition rather than causing dramatic changes in people’s behavior. This is a key component in his argument against the French Revolution in his essay “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” In this essay he argues that the revolution will only lead the
As said by professor of Leadership and Change at Harvard University John P. Kotter," tradition is a very powerful force" (qtd. in AZQuotes). In Shirley Jackson's chilling story "The Lottery", a town celebrates a special custom of stoning people to death every year. Jackson perfectly depicts a possible event that may occur from blindly following tradition without evaluating the purpose or usefulness of it in the first place. Her use of plot that creates twists on innocent or normal encounters, symbolism, and theme entail the reality of blind faith, tradition, and their consequences; in doing so, this story can be used to remind us how we should dwell upon real life in the past, present, and near future for the same actions.
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 is a short story about a town’s annual ritual. The lottery takes place on June 27th and everyone in the community participates. It is a normal event that no one thinks much of because of how many times it has occurred in the town’s history. The story starts out by explaining the physical appearance of the township and proceeds to discuss the procedure that leads up to the lottery. At the end of the process, Tessie Hutchinson is chosen. She says that it is unfair while people begin to throw stones at her.
In Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" there are many examples of traditions. For example, the town's lottery starts in late June and most of the townspeople start gathering around 10 o'clock by the post office and bank. During the gathering, the children come first, the men follow, and the women come last. The black box that is used is also a huge tradition according to this town. When the men's names were called they were to go up to the black box and draw out a piece of paper. After everyone had their piece of paper, they were to look at it and whoever had the piece of paper that had pencil scribbles on it won the lottery. Unfortunately, when you won the lottery you were stoned to death. Based on Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery"
Shirley Jackson's story, The Lottery is about a group of towns people who meet every year on the 27th of June. On this day a stoning takes place, as it washes away the sins of everyone that lived in the village. However, should the tradition of the stoning be changed when it becomes your time?
The Lottery has a lot of different arguments that can be made but the tradition of the ceremony is a huge factor. In Jackson's story, the townspeople are blind to the profound effect of tradition upon their lives as demonstrated by the tradition, the black box, and old man Warner.
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.
Why is it that a certain custom is loosely passed down from previous generations? We, as human beings, all have a specific routine or ritual that is dearly valued to us, but the reasoning to others is far misunderstood. As time evolves, modifications to traditions develop. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed.
The foolishness of blindly following tradition is satirized in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. At first, someone can identify the foolishness of the people when Tessie appears to the gathering late and says,”Clean forgot what day it is.” The thought of killing someone should be heart aching, but since the tradition has been done so many times in the past, it appears like a regular day. Later, when Bill opened his paper and found out he had the black dot, Tessie screamed in protest but Mrs. Delacroix says to be a good sport. The way Mrs. Delacroix says it means that she is trying to get Tessie to participate in the killing of one of her family member. Finally, when Mrs. Delacroix picks up the biggest rock and tells everyone to hurry up so they can get on with the rest of the day. She is willing to kill her friend just because it is the way it had been done for years before shows that people can get sucked into a tradition without even knowing it. That is ho Shirley Jackson depicts humanity in the short story The Lottery.
Shirley Jackson?s insights and observations about society are reflected in her shocking and disturbing short story The Lottery. Jackson reveals two general attitudes in this story: first is the shocking tendency for societies to select a scapegoat and second is the idea that communities are victims of social tradition and rituals.
“The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson story is a short story often classified as a horror story. It tells the story of a small town that holds a lottery each year. The person picked by this lottery is then stoned to death by the town. This story Considered by many to be one of the best short stories of the 20th century. This is not an easy story to understand because it leaves so many questions unanswered.
In the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson I think the point of the Lottery is because it’s tradition. The book “The Lottery” is about a small town that has a raffle every June 27. When This Raffle someone from 1 of the family’s that have entered gets stoned to death.