Shirley Jackson Plot Twists

Shirley Jackson is often regarded as one of the most brilliant authors of the twentieth century. Born in San Francisco in 1916, she spent the majority of her adolescence writing short stories and poetry (Allen). While she is known best for her supernatural stories, one of her most popular works is a short story called “The Lottery”. The lottery takes place in a small village in which once a year on June 24th, the town population is gathered. After the gathering, there is a drawing to see which family is chosen, after the family is chosen, another drawing takes place to see who is stoned to death. In the New Yorker's magazine book review hailed “The Lottery” as “one of the most haunting and shocking short stories of modern America and is one of the most frequently anthologized” (Jackson). This review stems heavily from Jackson’s brilliant use of irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing. However, perhaps what truly stands out is how Jackson is able to wrap all of those elements together as a way to show an overarching theme of the corruption that exists in human nature. While the real source of “The Lottery’s” inspiration is unclear, there has been heavy speculation that the roots lie heavily in the actions of the holocaust and the actions that took place during World War II. Regardless of the source material, a general consensus can be made that the plot of the lottery is a dark reflection of human actions.

In her story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson manages to catch the readers’ attention and ultimately shock them with an unexpected ending; all of which help her emphasize her critique toward the dark side of human nature and the evil that resides, sometimes, in those who we less expect it from. Jackson uses symbolism throughout the story that helps her set the mood and also makes the readers wonder and analyze the senseless violence and cruelty in their own lives.

Through her use of setting, which on the surface appears to be light-hearted and commonplace, Jackson masks and emphasizes the shock and horror of the story’s ending. Jackson first depicts a light and merry setting when she describes the day of the lottery. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.” By detailing the day in a bubbly way, Jackson veils the idea that nothing bad

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

Chills slide down your spine as a breath of wind rushes past your frame. Incoherent whispering fills your ear due to the flowing wind… Edgar Allen Poe, one of America’s most prolific writers, wrote numerous horror stories that defined the genre for modern writing. Poe used a specific writing style, which is now well known, but was it constant from one story to the next? Despite differences in plot and length, there are similarities of tone, setting, structure, narration, and character between two of his most famous stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” that allude to Poe’s true writing style.

As a young girl, Jackson bullied by her classmates, one instance she was even directly pelted with rocks(). This experience transferred into one of her most famous short stories, The Lottery. In this short story Jackson shows the cruelty of the mob towards a single person. Just like when she was a girl and her classmates and peers ganged up on her, the town gangs up on Mrs. Hutchinson a friend and neighbor to many. In the story Mrs. Hutchinson is the character who “wins” the lottery, Jackson uses Mrs. Hutchinson’s treatment as a representation of what happened to her as a child ().

Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson are two authors both known for their work with horror stories. Each author uses their own lives to help craft beautiful macabre stories that readers have enjoyed for years. Although written almost 100 years apart, Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, and Jackson’s “The Lottery”, uses similar elements of suspense and character traits to develop their stories, while using different points of view and critical approaches to keep the readers engaged and interested in the stories. Suspense is one of the key elements to both Poe’s and Jackson’s stories.

Noted by Darryl Hattenhauer, Shirley Jackson, an American gothic author, was "ranked among America's most highly regarded fiction writers" during the "1940s, 1950s, and 1960s" (1). Jackson argued that “a good story must engage its reader, persuade him that he wants to belong in the story for as long as it lasts” and if the author fails to provide such experience then they can consider their work a failure (Hall 113). The idea of authors providing an experience of enjoyment, made Jackson a successful writer. She also believed that if an author is asked where their ideas come from they would simply “find [themselves] telling over, in some detail, the story of [their] life” (Hall 117). Jackson’s continuous refusal to agree with her mother’s

The title of Jackson’s story contains suspense and tension to convey irony. Jackson’s use of words keeps the reader on the road that there are no problems and everything is great. For the townspeople’s behavior as they wait and when the lottery is chosen, the

The black box is the second symbol that also resembles the tradition of the lottery and holds an important purpose as well, the black box in the story is old and falling apart due to age. Shirley Jackson describes the box saying “the black box grew shabbier each year”, “it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color” (291). the villagers are frightened that the black box will be left out of the tradition since the lottery has been done including the black box . Mr. Summers is aware of the box and talked to the people of village of replacing the black box and making a new one, but the villagers did not like the idea of having a new box and forgetting the black box. Shirley jackson says

Deliberate authorial choices become crucial in getting the readers attention in a said literary work. Authors spend their whole career developing techniques to create a style that is their own. Shirley Jackson shows the reader her talent in writing a pessimistic short story that she is most famous for. Her famous short story “The Lottery” is one to keep the reader interested not only in the content but in the way she presents it and the emotional toll that it has on the readers. The story follows a town which partakes in a ritualistic lottery. Each household draws from a black box and whomever draws the black circle wins. The family who wins draws again and the winner of the family gets stoned. Jackson presents an pessimistic story which

The murder had been a brutal one, Jackson noted. Judging by the witness accounts and clues left behind by the assailant, it was easy to conclude that the crime had been one fueled by hatred. The room’s broken furniture also hinted at the fact that the meeting had been a violent one, and the smell of blood was present throughout the tiny apartment. The police had simply brushed off the incident as a suicide, that the victim was only targeted by mental illness, not some serial killer on the loose. However, Jackson knew that they were wrong. He was desperate for justice to be served and he would not stop at any cost to make sure that it was achieved. The area that he had lived in was known to be one that was corrupted by the government, a place

Miss Strangeworth’s actions and dialogue are major contributions to what makes her prejudiced. For example, Miss Strangeworth often tells others, “There wouldn’t have been

Poe has a history of presenting characters with personal flaws who often confess to atrocious deeds. Both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat tell the story of a seemingly senseless murder complicated by the vaugery of preternatural occurrences. The reader is forced to question whether or not they should believe what they are being told. Both of these narrators, the wife killer and the landlord killer, are unreliable and have a similar theme. The narrators are both mentally unstable however their conditions vary. The psychological implications of each character's’ attitude suggests while both are crazy, one is a sociopath and the other is a psychopath.

Edgar Allen Poe and Charlotte Perkins Stetson build the horror stories from within the main character by going crazy inside their mind.