The Easiest Path In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

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.

Leaving It All To Chance In the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the reader are shown different perspective of an event that can be seen from many other ways, confusing you. The hints she places in the story is purposely leading readers to see a certain way, so that by the end of the story she can catch everyone by surprise. There are many examples of her using small events in order to make people assume a certain thing, but in reality that is not what is actual going to happen.

Once upon a time there was a little village. In this village three hundred people happily farmed and played and went about their business. The children went to school while the men cut wood or farmed, and the women cooked and cleaned. Every summer in June each of villagers took part in the traditional lottery drawing and one villager was picked for the prize – a stoning. In 1948, Shirley Jackson published this short story known as “The Lottery,” in The New York Times. The story’s plot shocked readers all over America as they learned of the horror happening in such a quaint town. Jackson purposely set this tragic event in this innocent setting to emphasize humanity’s cruelty. Using her appalling short story, The Lottery,

One of the most significant challenges to face mankind throughout history is how to bring diverse cultures together to achieve harmony and trust in the interest of working together for the benefit of the next generation. The short stories, “Dead Man’s Path” by Chinua Achebe and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, as well as the poem, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes all demonstrate how culture, tradition, and education work together to affect one’s worldview and the common threads that link them together. “Dead Man’s Path” is a story about cultural conflict and how the need for respect and communication are integral to a balance between honoring traditions and embracing modern ideas. “The Lottery” is a short story about human nature,

The theme of “The Lottery” By Shirley Jackson and “First They Came” By Martin Niemoller standing up for what is right may not always be the easiest path. The theme means it can be hard to stand up for what you think is right and a lot of times people are afraid of what people think. ‘The lottery’ is about an event every year during the summer that everyone in the village gathers for this event, The husbands of each family draws out of the black box and whoever gets the black dot gets stoned. ‘First they came’ is about that if you don’t have anyone who stands ups for you no one will speak up for you. Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller deals with standing up for what you believe in is not always the easiest path, but they do so in different ways.

b. Background In the short story “The Lottery,” the inhabitants of a village participate in a lottery, which is essentially a tradition for them. However, the villagers are oblivious to the true consequences and destructiveness of their death ritual. One June day each year, the lottery is conducted and the “winner” is violently stoned to death. The very same day, the villagers return home and carry on with their normal day-to-day functions.

The Black Box in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson signifies the physical connection between the villagers and their unwillingness to give up their tradition. “The Lottery” is very unpredictable and quite misleading. The black box has no functionality, except every June 27th. Shirley Jackson depicts the black box as an important and traditional tool.

“The Lottery” a short story by Shirley Jackson, features a small town during the time of their lottery. The lottery is an annual event, organized by Mr. Summers. It is a highly important time, as the whole town comes to the town square on the day of the lottery. The guidelines are quite simple: everyone takes a slip of paper out of the symbolic black box, and the slip of paper with the black mark carved on it, is the “lucky winner”. But their definition of the lottery is different一usually, a lottery is a valuable thing to win. But when Tessie Hutchinson, the “lucky winner” gets her reward by getting stoned to death by the rest of the villagers, it is clear that winning this lottery can't be a good affair... So what is the purpose of this lottery? Rather than discontinuing the lottery, the town continues with it because they don't want to upset an old tradition.

“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” is a fictional short story written by Shirley Jackson is a that signifies the obeying rules and tradition, as well as being rebellious. This all suggests that their not so lucky “lottery” is a conventional ceremony. The story centers on a small town on the town’s day of their once-a-year Lottery. The significance of the town Lottery is to ensure their belief to sacrifice in order to be given a plethora of rain to obtain a good farming season the coming year. The story focuses around the erroneous belief that if the villagers sacrifice a human to their Weather God, then the villagers will receive good weather to grow crops. The villagers believe that if they do not sacrifice, then they will be given insufficient farming conditions. “The Lottery” displays many literary elements throughout the pages, however, the ones that are most evident are the story’s setting, symbolism, and irony; the author constructs a paradoxical story through these elements.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story taking place on June 27th in “the square, between the post office and the bank” (Jackson 419). In the story, the villagers are gathering together for their annual lottery drawing. The lottery is a tradition in which the surrounding towns have committed to participate in. The lottery’s winner is based upon a person who draws the slip of paper with the dark spot. The winner is murdered by the rest of the town members. In “The Lottery,” Jackson provides many symbols to prove the theme, traditions and customs, is a huge part of the villagers’ lives.

It was a sunny summer day when all the villagers gathered in the village on June 27th for the annual Lottery. The actual event did not start until later on in the day, so there were little activities that the community members could do to keep them occupied. People would also go around looking for stones and collected them so they will have enough for the event. Mr. Summers is the person who conducted the Lottery. He has no kids so running the Lottery gave him something to do since he had a lot of time on his hands. Therefor he created the Lottery event and that was what he did to keep himself busy. The Lottery is the main reason of the villagers gathering together; at the event all the families from the village gather together to pick a slip of paper from a black box to determine who will get stoned by all the other villagers. In short story "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson demonstrates the dangers of a culture that requires people to participate in traditions that may lead to death.

In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson writes about the game lottery, which makes the story very ironic. Unlike all of the other Lottery games, in this traditional version no one wants to be chosen, because that brings them the end of their life. Jackson explains how keeping up with some traditions that are part of people’s life, may not be the best choice to embrace a particular culture. Jackson uses the Lottery as an example to express her idea about the ethical issues such as; violent murder, harming people, forcefully following a tradition, and lying. All of these ethical issues are created by blindly following tradition in “The Lottery.”

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.

Usually when you win the lottery it is a good thing because you win money but to Shirley Jackson it’s not. It is a short story in 1948 in a small town in America where traditions are very different. In this story i will be telling you about the setting, mood, and theme.