Rituals In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Traditions are based all around us. Today’s society has many traditions like family traditions, holiday traditions, southern traditions, and so many more. Although most traditions are harmless, it is not always best to follow tradition. Sometimes following tradition can be dangerous. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” villagers participate in an annual drawing, and the winner gets stoned. The villagers are blind to how cruel and brutal it is because of their commitment to this tradition and to that society. Fear is what is keeping this village from breaking such an act. The fear of actually giving up this tradition and society is what is keeping this brutal act existent. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a perfect example that following tradition

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” (Twain). The Lottery begins during the summer. A small, seemingly normal, town is gathering to throw the annual “Lottery”. In the end, the townspeople—children included—gather around and stone the winner to death, simply because it was tradition. The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective. “I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). As humans develop as a race, their practices should develop with them. Shirley Jackson develops the

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.

A number of details about the ritual of the lottery show how this meaningless ritual is deeply embedded into the villager’s beliefs. The people of the village, who take on

Almost everyone has gone to a funeral before, and they have witnessed their loved ones passing on. For example, when you go to a funeral everything is dim, bitter, and depressing. In “The Lottery” the characters have a drawing of cards on who is going to die. In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses descriptive language to show how the characters won’t change tradition even though it is inhumane.

In Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," what appears to be an ordinary day in a small town takes an evil turn when a woman is stoned to death after "winning" the town lottery. The lottery in this story reflects an old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order to encourage the growth of crops. But this story is not about the past, for through the actions of the town, Jackson shows us many of the social ills that exist in our own lives.

In the short story "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson uses figurative language, symbolism, and irony to reveal her theme that things are not always what they seem to be. In this shocking short story, she reveals the corruption of human nature by telling of the ceremony they call “The lottery”.

Everyone has their own way of solving problems; however, ritual is a form that people doing one thing in the same way. It defines as “the prescribed form of conducting a formal secular ceremony.” However if the meaning of ritual is mistaken, the consequence could be unpredictable." The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson gives us a lecture about a tortuous ritual. The story takes place in a small village with 300 citizens, they gather for a yearly lottery which everyone should participate. The story leads to a horrific ending by people forgetting the concept of ritual.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is about a town of 300 people who have an annual lottery to decide who is stoned to death (stones thrown at them until they die). The purpose of the lottery is for good luck with the harvest and crops. The townspeople only remember the purpose and tidbits of the traditional lottery. Because it is a long-standing tradition, the town is too afraid to change anything or give up the lottery entirely.

Author Shirley Jackson makes a daunting effort to give the impression of everything in this small town being normal. She writes about some of the children of the story. Her efforts to depict the children doing what children do best, playing, added a simple twist to the story, and that same twist would soon shock the readers once they realize the purpose of the stones the young boys were playing with were actually going to be used to stone someone to death, but not just yet. One of the main characters of the story, Tessie Hutchinson, made her way to the lottery a little bit late, flustered and out of breath. She even admits to forgetting what day it was. However, despite all odds, she still made it on time (SparkNotes Editors ). At this point the author makes a humungous step in the story that is intended to confuse the reader. Most readers would probably think , this must really be an important event ; Tessie must have been running or at least walking very fast, trying to make it to this

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.

First and foremost, the townspeople have replaced important components for the ritual that they have been using for generations. For instance, slips of paper have replaced the wooden chips that have been used for the past years. “…so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded,” shows that the ritual is not taken seriously. The quote states that the parts of the ritual were not the same. Consequently, it shows how the people used to hold the ritual with a purpose, but now they follow tradition without knowing the real motive for the Lottery. Therefore, this is one reason that shows that they are blindly following tradition.

“The Lottery” is an impeccable story that is difficult to disregard. Despite the numerous criticism that has been placed on the story, the language and text of the story is able to create an emotion in nearly anyone who reads the literature. Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” is an anecdote depicting a lottery drawn every year in a small town. On June 27th, the season of summer in New England, the townspeople were all gathered in the times square for the annual lottery. As the tradition is stated every year there is a lottery held the same day, the same time, and in the same place, in which one person will be chosen and stoned to death by the people in the village. This short story is not simple to understand the more wording that

“The lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson, was first published in Newer Yorker magazine in 1948. The story is setting in a peaceful and quit small town. Naturally, this is a beginning of a joyful or love story. However, in the end of this story, a man is stoning to die by all the community. In a deeper level of understanding, the author is tried to talk about tradition. Although tradition is always considered as truth and people must follow, something it could turn to totally negative. Jackson use symbolism to show the reader, follow the tradition without question is dangerous.

not been discarded. Set on a village in a warm summer day, the story begins with several