The Lottery: A Short Story

there is quiet conversation between friends. Mr. Summers, who runs the lottery, arrives with a black box. The original box was lost many years ago, even before Old Man Warner, the oldest person in the village, can remember. Each year Mr. Summers suggests that they make a new box, but no one is willing to go against tradition. The people were willing to use slips of paper instead of woodchips as markers, as the village had grown too large for the wood chips to fit in the box. A list of all the families and households in the village is made, and several matters of who will draw for each family are decided. Mr. Summers is sworn in as the official of the lottery in a specific ceremony. Some people remember that there used to be a song and salute as part of the ceremony, but these are no longer performed. Tessie Hutchinson arrives in the square late because she has forgotten what day it was. She joins her husband and children before the lottery can begin. Mr. Summers explains the lottery’s rules: each family will be called up to the box and draw a slip of paper. One of the villagers tells Old Man Warner that the people of a nearby village are thinking about ending the lottery. Old Man Warner laughs at the idea. He believes that giving up the lottery would cause nothing but trouble, and a loss of civilized behavior. A woman responds that some places have already given up the lottery. Everyone finishes drawing, and each

“You may begin!” Everybody dived into the paper. I stood at the front of the room with the timer in my hand. As the timer went off, I yelled,

"Thanks," he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed to my right. I saw Mr. Savo stare at him for a moment, then go back to his cards. "You were pretty rotten yesterday, you know," Danny Saunders said. "I'm sorry about that. " I was surprised at how happy I was to see him.

While many corruptions in the world are fought against, people, such as Tessie Hutchinson, decide to make the issue unimportant unless it openly involves them. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, citizens of the town pay no mind to the issue at hand, rather than noticing the actual problem. Tessie Hutchinson’s extreme shift in emotion and behavior ties straight from the theme when her family is the so-called lucky family in the lottery.

“The Lottery” takes place on a warm sunny summer day of June 27, 1948 in New England. The small farming village all gather around ten o’clock around the post office and the bank for the yearly harvest for the lottery. This village is very small compared to other villages, this particular village has only about three hundred people and we know that because the lotter only takes about two hours where other take days. The

On a clear early-summer day, citizens in a small village gather in the town square. The children arrive first, running about and playing while collecting stones in their pockets. The men and women of the town trickle in, talking amongst themselves and observing the children’s growing pile of rocks. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Summers, the town’s main civic activity leader, enters the town square with a large black box and a three-legged stool. Small slips of paper fill the battered box, and citizens excitedly anticipate the drawing. Mrs. Hutchinson, a loud and outspoken woman, rushes to the square to join her husband, Bill. Laughing off her tardiness, she engages with other women in the crowd before the commencement of the drawing. Without delay, Mr. Summers begins to call surnames of families in alphabetical order, allowing the head of the household to select a single paper from the box. Solemnly, the men select the folded papers, keeping them hidden until they are instructed to do otherwise. In the meantime, there is light discussion about nearby townships abandoning the tradition of the lottery, much to the dismay

In this essay I will be doing a compare and contrast between the two stories “The Lottery” by Chris Alani and “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Both stories were good, and had a deep meaning behind both stories that leaves the readers wondering why the stories had to end in the way they did. Now I’ll start off by giving a summary of both stories so you can know and understand my point of view better.

In this story everyone is allowed to freely share their opinions and beliefs without being discriminated, but the way they feel does not have a impact on the tradition that their town still continues. “There's always been a lottery he added petulantly… said old man Warner.” (Lines 200) this piece of text evidence shows that the town carries on their tradition and old man Warner makes sure they do. In the next text evidence it will explain how others feel towards the lottery and it says in lines (202) “Some places have already quit the lotteries, Mrs. Adams said”, This piece of text evidence is one of many that shows that the people in the town do not agree with the act of the Lottery anymore and they are always aloud to express their feelings and beliefs towards the Lottery. The only problem is that the man in charge of the lottery who is old man Warner, does not except how the town feels because their feelings are not the same as his which relates back to the quote. If old man Warner had accepted the people of the towns different feelings and beliefs of the people in the town even though they differ from his. In this story Ms. Hutchinson a ordinary person in the story who was randomly picked no matter how she felt. She was chosen to get stoned even though everyone

At the beginning of the passage, Nancy Hutchinson steps up to take her turn in selecting a paper out of the black box. Immediately, it is apparent that the narrator is telling the story in the third-person and has a high level of knowledge about the characters and event taking place. The narrator is knowledgeable but by no means intrusive. The family members, Nancy, Tessie, and Bill, are described as they grab a folded piece of paper containing their fate. Nancy “took” one “daintily”, Tessie “snatched” it “defiantly”, and Bill simply “reached” in and “felt around” before taking the last one (234). The narrator clearly sees how each person is acting and, in turn, feeling about the lottery. There are a few remarks by the townspeople included. However, there is no commentary or opinion from the narrator

Inside of the beat-up box on the stool were hundreds of pieces of blank paper, and one paper with a large black spot. If you had drawn the marked paper, you were to be stoned. The “winner” this year was Tessie Hutchinson, the mother of three children and wife to Bill Hutchinson.

“He was okay. I thought he was cute… in a skinny, nerdy kind of way,” Lisa argued. “And his name was Bill Brannon.”

The story started when people are gathered every end of June for the annual lottery ritual in a small village. All the head of each family are required to grab a slip a slip of paper in the box that is placed in the middle of the village. The in charge of the lottery was Mr. Summer. The conflict occurs when Tessie found out that her husband Bill was the center of the Villager’s attention. There is something on the paper that he picked. Because of that Tessie can’t even accept it and she keep on yelling that it is not fair. She believed that the time given to Bill was not enough to pick the paper that he wanted from Mr. Summer. The entire Hutchinson family, are

Now that all the papers are handed out the men begin to unfold the slips of paper to reveal blank pieces of paper. However one man is left with a paper with a black dot on it. The man unlucky enough to receive this slip of paper is Bill Hutchinson. Promptly Tessie Hutchinson, Bill’s wife, begins to panic saying he didn’t have enough time to pick his paper. Being a reasonable official Mr. Summers allows Hutchinson and each of his family members to reselect a paper. Bill, his two sons, one daughter, and wife Tessie each take a paper and Tessie Hutchinson is left with the paper with the black dot. The townspeople begin to clear a space around Tessie Hutchinson. One of the younger boys from earlier in the story hands her son a stone. While she screams “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” the townspeople begin stoning her, the lottery “winner”.

“Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep growing” (Jackson, 2). The town never had an overpopulation issue, there was never a good enough reason to continue the lottery and even less start it for that matter. The social hierarchy of the town did not allow the people to have a voice and that made them feel intimidated. The people were almost programed and expected to accept and carry this unfair tradition; not because of the meaning of it but because they were scared to ask to let it go in results of things getting worse.

In “The Lottery”, author Shirley Jackson portrays the importance of violence and inhumanity that is being shown throughout the community and how the townspeople play a major roll in it. Shirley Jackson believes that violence is huge within this community and she also believes that the community isn’t aware of their actions. Every year on June 27th, the community gathers at the town's square to attend the lottery. The folks who run this lottery are Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves (The Postmaster). Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves will randomly announce names from the lottery box. If the name announced was on the paper the family member selected, then the audience would throw stones at them until they were dead.