Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson artfully uses foreshadowing in order to build suspense and create a shocking ending. Jackson’s success in “The Lottery” comes from her ability to keep the reader in the dark about the evils, until the very end. She has masterfully set up what the reader believes as a pleasant event. But, it is not until the ending, can the reader see the foreshadowing of the evils to come. Through the use of foreshadowing, Jackson is able to contribute to the story 's overall effect of suspense and a shocking ending.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, is a suspenseful story that begins on a pleasant morning in June, but it quickly shifts into a morbid display of tradition. The characters display a sudden change in loyalty to each other once one of the town member’s names is drawn from the “black box”. Through this action, along with several other vivid examples from the text, Jackson cultivates an underlying theme of hypocrisy and the evil of human nature.

The Lottery, and Christianity Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”, if left at face value, is a perverse tale of a small village sacrificial ceremony, which leaves a lasting impression upon the reader. However to take the story at face value would nearly be an exercise in futility, for then the reader would be missing the deeper meanings found in the delicate symbolism that Jackson places throughout the tale.

On the surface, Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” reads as a work of horror. There is a village that holds an annual lottery where the winner is stoned to death so the village and its people could prosper. Some underlying themes include: the idea that faith and tradition are often followed blindly, and those who veer away from tradition are met with punishment, as well as the idea of a herd mentality and bystander apathy. What the author manages to do successfully is that she actually uses the names of historical figures to add to the underlying themes of the story. Some names include the Puritan spiritual advisor Anne Hutchinson, who is banished for speaking out against Christian beliefs and traditions, the founder of

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” is about a bizarre ritual performed in a town in which the townspeople proceed to follow every year. In a black, worn box they place all the names of the community. Once all the names are placed inside, Mr. Summers draws a name. After the name is chosen, this member will be stoned to death by the others in the community. Tessie Hutchinson in the story tries to reject the repetitive tradition of the lottery.

Andrew Lansley once said “Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behavior, and they are classic excuses.” Most people tend to follow cultural customs because they have grown with them or it has been forced onto them with factors such as parents or their environment. However, is it always right to follow these customs even if they are in fact considered wrong? Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story about the cultural norms of a small community and its annual lottery ritual; a stoning. Jackson overthrows the story by making the lottery a corrupt occurrence rather than a victory. The reader would probably think that the “winner” of the lottery would be benefited but in this case the victory was not so delightful. In her short story “The Lottery” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.

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

In some ways, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson could be seen as controversial. Within the first paragraph, we are left with two main questions; “what is the lottery?” and “why does it happen?” A major theme that answers the first question is all about tradition. Yes, the lottery is a tradition in many towns. No one has ever questioned this tradition, even though it is quite inhumane. In all honesty, you could compare this story very well to The Hunger Games just because of what this tradition consists of. Imagine being in a town of around three hundred people and having your life put on the line. The lottery itself comes down to all of the townspeople meeting up, and each family name is read by Mr. Summers, and the head of the family

What is the difference between superstitions and traditions? «The lottery» by Shirley Jackson provides a good example how superstitions of people from a tiny town affect on those traditions. This story shows dark side of Humanity. Whole community entrusts their life with a small black box. The allegory can confuse you, because the main purpose of the «lottery» is kill one of the citizens for a strange false belief. To my mind, the author tried to explain why new generation sometimes shouldn’t continue the weird and cruel traditions.

The author of “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson decided it was important to write this short story in order to inform the readers about another dimension, where a certain common tradition gets prized with something obscure. Some readers can be shocked when reading this story, because they might be surprised and even shocked with the themes that play along in the storyline. This short story “The Lottery” was so controversial at the time, because in the date it was published in June 24, 1948 there were so many themes from the stories that could relate to past events or even event that were taking place at the time.

“The Lottery” was written in 1948 by Shirley Jackson. Mrs. Jackson, born in 1916, was known for her tales of horror and supernatural novels. She and her literary critic husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman lived in a little town called Bennington, Vermont. Mrs. Jackson was not accepted by the town. Her novels, especially “The Lottery”, revealed the dark side of human nature. Stephen King honored Shirley Jackson by dedicating his book Firestarter to her.

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” a small village is preparing for an annual drawing, a tradition carried out for generations. During this ritual, the head of each household draws a blank piece of paper out of a black box. One piece of paper is marked with a single black dot and if chosen, the outcome is having the winner’s entire household draw out of the box. Whoever chooses the black dot out of the household is stoned to death by the entire village. In this instance, a husband wins to which his wife protests, and then she is the ultimate victim who is sacrificed. This story includes many literary elements like foreshadowing, warning of a future event, symbolism, symbols used in the story to represent ideas,and irony, when the contrary to what is expected to happen, occurs. Jackson uses foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony to prove the theme that it is foolish and barbaric to blindly follow tradition.

Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery is set in a small village who relies deeply on their crops. This story is about a sacrifice that takes place every year in which the heads of households draw for their families in order to see who “wins” and saves the town. The readers grow close to a character named Tessie who decides to speak her mind when it’s too late. In the end, the townsfolk realise that what comes around goes around.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, we observe a community that is absorbed in their rituals and traditions. In this society, they feel bound to their traditions and are even willing to abandon some of humanity’s deepest morals. The basic question of right and wrong is presented as our morals are disregarded in Jackson’s tradition based society. Their past is what they look towards when regarding their future. This community feels tied to their fading tradition and refuses to evolve even when everyone around them is. Consequently, they have become numb to the acts they commit countless times. Every generation is ingrained with these ideals and are expected to never waver from them.

Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” warns readers of the consequences that come from blindly following tradition. She builds upon the fact that the people in the town follow the tradition of The Lottery without questioning it because it is tradition. In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson uses suspenseful foreshadowing and portrays her characters as ignorant in order to suggest that blindly following traditions can lead to disastrous and even fatal consequences. Jackson creates a suspenseful setting in her story by inserting small hints of the lottery’s outcome in character’s dialogue and by dragging out the final lottery drawing to expand on the idea of how unfair the the tradition of the lottery is. Jackson expands on the idea that all