Message Behind The Lottery

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the small village, at first, seems to be lovely, full of tradition, with the townspeople fulfilling their civic duties, but instead this story is bursting with contrast. The expectations that the reader has are increasingly altered. The title of this short story raises hope, for in our society the term “lottery” typically is associated with winning money or other perceived “good” things. Most people associate winning a lottery with luck, yet Jackson twists this notion around and the luck in this village is with each of the losers.

Within the first few lines of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" we are faced with such adjectives as clear, sunny, fresh and warmth. She goes on to paint a picture of small children just out of school for the summer, as the townspeople gather for the annual Lottery. This leads us to believe that the rest of the story is as cheery as the summer day initially described. We as the readers are virtually unaware of the horrible senseless events that lie ahead. Through the use of symbolism Shirley Jackson reveals the underlying decay of ethics that results from an empty ritual followed by narrow-minded people.

The lottery is usually associated with beating the odds and winning something extravagant. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”, the reader is led to believe the story is about something cheerful and happy given the setting of a warm summer day and children out of school for the summer. Jackson turns winning the lottery into a bad thing. Of 300 villagers Tessie Hutchinson shows up late, claiming she forgot about the annual lottery drawing, but seems very excited to have made it on time. When Tessie was in no danger she is gossiping with neighbors and encourages her husband to draw for the winner. Jackson curiously builds up the character of Tessie so that it seems she is blinded by tradition until she becomes a victim of it

“The Lottery” has many symbols that help create the sinister and somber tone of the story. The black box from which the papers are drawn as well as the black dot on the paper are both symbolic of death. Black is a universally accepted

    "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

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a terrify story about a small town and their traditions. The Ending of the lottery is the most shocking many of its readers have ever read. Why is it so shocking. Well Shirley jackson uses sybolism and simple narritive and her normal life to convey such a shock.

Tess’s tone in her last words before being stoned is desperate and hysterical, because she knows that her protests will not result in anything but death. The black box used in the lottery each year isn’t something that the reader would usually associate with a happy lottery. The box is described as, “shabby…splintered…faded and stained,” yet no one in the community wants to replace it because, “no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” The color black symbolizes the savage and evil nature of the lottery as well as the townspeople’s participation in it and the shabbiness of the box indicates how outdated the tradition truly is. Like the lottery, the box is well worn with its real purpose lost, and the townspeople are extremely reluctant in letting it go, even getting defensive when the idea of it is brought up. After the stoning of the “winner” occurs, the townspeople go on with their lives as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The lottery takes less than two hours so that the townspeople could, “…get home for noon dinner,” immediately following the execution. The normalcy of the lottery to the townspeople is horrifying and all throughout the story everyone seems ok with this evil tradition, children are shown laughing and their parents, gossiping and talking about work. When Tess Hutchinson chooses the paper slip with a black dot making her the “winner”, Bill Hutchinson, her husband, as

According to Helen E. Nebeker, most acknowledge the energy of The Lottery, admitting that the psychological stun of the ritual murder in a modern, rural small-town cannot be easily overlooked. Virgil Scott, for instance, says, “the story leaves me uneasy because of the author's use of incidental symbolism: the black box, the forgotten tuneless chant, the ritual salute to assure the entire recreation of the procedure of the lottery forget to serve the story as they may have.” At that point, they indicate fundamental weakness by acknowledging that Jackson has preferred to give no answer to her story, but it leaves the meaning to our imagination, allowing a good deal of flexibility in our interpretation, while yet demanding that everything in the story has been obtained to assure us how we are to 'take' the ending events in the story. Maybe the critical conflict depicted above comes from failure to see that The Lottery really intertwines two stories and subjects into a fictional vehicle. The obvious, easily discovered story shows up in the facts, wherein members of a small town meet to decide who will be the next victim of the annual savagery. The symbolic hints which develop into a second, sub rosa story becomes apparent as early as the fourth word of the story when the date of June 27th alerts us to the season of the summertime with all its connotation of ancient ritual. From the symbolic development of the black box, the story shifts quickly to climax.

Throughout the beginning of “The Lottery” the reader is uninformed about what the town’s lottery is actually for. In hindsight there is some subtle foreshadowing for what takes place at the end. For example, Mr. Summers makes the comment “Thought we were going to have to go on without you, Tessie” (Jackson, 2), to Mrs. Hutchinson. Even though it is foreshadowing as the story does end with them having to go on without her as she is the one who is chosen to be sacrificed, the foreshadowing is not very noticeable. Additionally, when one thinks of a lottery, death is not the first thing one associates with it, so it is not clear that this line is foreshadowing the fact that they will have to go on without her. Another example of

There are many important symbolic items in this story, but the major symbolic items are the black wooden box, white slips of paper and the stones. The black box represents the tradition of the lottery. As the lottery itself the black box is old and worn. Also, the color of the box is black which could represent death since black is considered color of death. The black box was always kept in public view to remind the villagers about the tradition “The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three-legged stool, and the stool was put in the centre of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it” (Jackson 4). The three-legged stool on which the box was placed is also important since the stool itself was unstable and at one point almost got knocked down. The tradition as the three-legged stool is unstable and could get knocked down at any point. Next, the white slips of paper “He dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.” (Jackson 60). The papers represent the lives of the villagers and how their lives can be taken away at any moment with a single

The black box is a symbol of the old tradition that is the lottery. To perform the annual event, this prop is crucial and has been brought into play for quite a long time. The text states, “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.” (5). This scene particularly shows the box had been put into service long ago.

Once you get to the end you get to see how horrid the story actually is compared to the beginning. The tradition known as “The Lottery” is an old one that almost every village would do, but by the

Many readers in the beginning would assume that the lottery would be good thing, even assume it a lottery of money. However, the lottery is the fate of life. The story setting took place in a town where the lottery takes place. There were multiple lotteries that occur though out the story.

A small town, an annual lottery, and a stoning, we get so much from the story The Lottery by Shirly Jackson. Besides from being a very entertaining read The Lottery also does a great job of sharing important messages with the reader. But to determine those messages one must first determine what the story is about. When looking at the text it is evident that The Lottery is about the power of tradition, the pull to conformity, and the dark side of human nature.

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson in the late 1940’s. Shirley Jackson was a middle 1900’s writer known for the horror and mystery in her writing. One of her stories was “The Lottery”, which was based of a cult like society, where someone was sacrificed for what they thought was the better of the communities tradition. The theme of this short story was the danger of following tradition blindly. The story is about a family who has to deal with the sacrifice of tradition.