Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

When a loving, caring, family oriented, women come in conflict with the horrible, despicable, inhumane lottery in a situation in which the town goes together, the results may be a terrible end in a young life. In “The Lottery” written by, Shirley Jackson, the main character Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson’s and the town folk are the main characters of this story. In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses the use of characterization to portray the main ideas of the story. Shirley Jackson also uses the use of plot structure and the point of view in which the story is being told. The Lottery is a way to make a sacrifice for a good harvest in the upcoming season.

In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson the change in tone shifts over time starting with a gleeful and sunny beginning turning to a ghastly and horrifying story towards the resolution. The author shifts her tone in order to make a more dramatic ending that will stick with the reader, the ending transforms the short story from realism to symbolism so that the readers can further use this story in a real world context.

On page 27, we see that, “There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up--of heads of families. heads of households in each family. members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery” (27). The whole process and build up towards the lottery is gradual. Jackson intensively describes each scene and portrays imagery throughout her story. This makes the story slow-paced and steady yet, detailed. Pacing also affects the mood of the story as Jackson’s detailed descriptions create a peaceful vibe and setting for the story to take place in. The pacing of the story creates suspense as vague clues emerge but, are not addressed until later on. Jackson writes everything in detail which makes the reader anxious to move forth and find out what happens to whoever is chosen for the lottery. This makes the story seem longer than it is and creates a lead in to the climax. In the text, we see that, “All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly… Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her” (34). Throughout the whole story, Jackson describes everything in excruciating detail until we hit the climax. Once the villagers find out that Tessie received the

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

Tessie Hutchinson being one to protest the lottery when her husband wasn’t given enough time to choose, yet he did nothing for her when she was chosen. For the sake of tradition, these people are giving up the lives of their friends and family, their loved ones. Multiple times in the story, it shows that people are eager to finish the lottery and go back about their business. Some examples include a mother wishing her son could draw in the lottery for her if he were of age. No one in this town wants to die themselves, and yet are still laying down the lives of others to continue this twisted tradition.

The Lottery is a mysterious short story about a town that holds a recurrent drawing to randomly select one townsperson to have them stoned to death. The theme of this story surrounds obsolescence, both because of an individual’s actions and because of the town ritual that stands despite a forgotten cause. Shirley Jackson details the last moments of Tessie’s life, just before being stoned, even after she stood up for herself in protest of the lottery’s ritual. Despite her willingness to discuss the possibility for change, Tessie is still killed mercilessly. Jackson writes this story carefully to ensure the lottery seems obsolete to the reader by not giving it a cause or reason. She successfully makes the reader consider it pointless and wonder why these people are continuing the tradition.

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.

The conflict of the lottery shows the selfish attitude of character, Tessie Hutchinson. Overall, the Tessie Hutchinson did not disagree with the rules or process of the lottery until her family name

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you go on a ride of emotions with the characters in the development of their lives during this ritualistic Lottery that takes place. The ideal of the story is a lottery is head every year in which all the townspeople's names are put in a lottery and drawn from. The person whose name is chosen will become the chose one of the town and use as a sacrifice of sorts. They will be sacrificed as an offering to be blessed with better crops for the following year. So as the happy townsfolk do their “wonderful” lottery the one chosen wasn’t so happy as the rest. Tessie Hutchinson was chosen and has to be sacrificed by stoning for the greater good of her village, but once chosen her views on the whole matter swing in a heartbeat. The whole theme of the story is how tradition for some can vary for people to people, but In the lottery is it their tradition wrong or right in there minds. We have to determine if the mob of townsfolk are wrong or right for stoning the housewife Tessie to death for their beliefs in the lottery.

“The Lottery,” the short story by Shirley Jackson. The plot is not too hard to understand except that you do not realize what is going on until the very end. It talks about the people gather in the village square. Then they seem to be gathering up stones especially the children, and then there is the actual lottery. That means a drawing where somebody is going to “win.” Now, it turns out that after everybody pulls out their pieces of paper, and there is this elaborate ritual where family unit go and then the actual family members draw their numbers. But finally, Tessie Hutchinson, one of the house wives, one of the mothers in the community, gets the paper with the black dot on it, and she does not win anything good. In fact she is marked

Tessie Hutchinson is a woman who arrives late for the lottery in town square to maintain an ancient practice of that small town. The story takes place in the town square of a small village in America on summer season. In the short story “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson is one of the most shocking and terrifying stories in the fiction. Jackson uses multiple signs, symbols and gestures throughout the story to indicate feelings and suffering that village. Jackson also explores the ritual sacrifice of the villages and about the unfairness of the drawing.

Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery,” is a story about the need to find a sin offering to appease the community’s superstition while everyone else plays the scapegoat.

Stonings have been around for centuries, it is something I heard about as a child in Sunday school, something I thought was done in the past and not today. Stonings are alive to this day mostly in the middle east. more often than not women are stoned more than men. Convictions in Iran are based on witness testimony, judge conviction or confession; friends, family, neighbors and any other volunteers may participate in the stoning of a victim. Stoning is a horrific way to die, sometimes taking up to two hours to kill the victim. In the story “The Lottery” author Shirley Jackson has the towns people of the story stone one of their own as a sacrifice while in the middle east people are stoned as a punishment for “crime” this act of capital punishment is barbaric and should be banned.

The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small village that practices a sort of tradition or ritual that occurs every year on June 27th. A few villages have stopped doing this tradition of the lottery, with the exception of this particular village. Every year a person is chosen from the lottery and they are stoned by the people of this village. The second short story that will be focused on in this essay is “The Ones who Walk away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. This story is about a city that is full of joy, prosperity and beauty, but behind closed doors they keep a child locked in a dark and isolated basement.

Towards the end of the story, I was surprised by the fact that when Bill Hutchinson won the lottery, his wife was not happy. People are often happy when they win prizes, but here the situation was different. The truth was that nobody wanted to win the prize. The story ends with a surprise in that, Tessie who was the ultimate winner of the prize was stoned to death. Nobody seemed to be worried about her death, not even the family members.