The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Analysis

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson was written in 1948. The story takes place in a village square of a town on June 27th. The author does not use much emotion in the writing to show how the barbaric act that is going on is look at as normal. This story is about a town that has a lottery once a year to choose who should be sacrificed, so that the town will have a plentiful year for growing crops. Jackson has many messages about human nature in this short story. The most important message she conveys is how cruel and violent people can be to one another. Another very significant message she conveys is how custom and tradition can hold great power over people. Jackson also conveys the message of

The book begins with the author’s Jewish community witnessing a different community being taken away by the hungarian police. “Crammed into cattle cars by the hungarian police, they cried silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were left crying. The train disappearded over the horizon. Hehind me, someone sighed, ‘What do you expect? That’s war…’ The depotees were quickly forgotten. Days went by and life was normal agian”(6). This quote demonstates how fast people are willing to move on and ignore obvious signs of their own oppression. If someone ignores something for long enough, it could eventualy turn into somehting horrible like the

Never blindly follow traditions because something really bad can happen, like punishment. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a lottery that villagers commit once a year and they pick a card out of a box and if they draw a black dot they have to draw again band if they get the dot twice they get the "reward". The “First they came” by Martin Niemoller is about this guy who doesn’t stand up for others but when the guy came for him and he had no one to stand up for him when the time came for him.

These characters went through a lot and most of their experiences were similar. For instance, these people as a whole all hated the Nazis and Hitler for making their lives so miserable and scary. On pages 6 & 7 in the story “ The Boys Who Fought the Nazis” the author talked about how Germany was a dangerous place to live and everyone was scared to talk out about the

Shirley Jackson shows that the person who follows a tradition zealously is, ironically, not exempt. She does this with the character of Tessa in her story, The Lottery. Tessa is the personification of the tradition’s strongest supporters. She is portrayed as the most excited and enthusiastic for the tradition. She is an example of a “zealot”, a supporter who will be the last to turn away from this cause.

A common theme of placing societal influences over personal values and beliefs can be found in Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron”. These short stories describe situations in which the citizens allow the superiors to have full control, without thinking twice about the laws and traditions that require their submission. Both of these short stories are similar in theme, because each tells about a community that chooses to participate in cruel and inhumane traditions, rather than allow individuals to form their own beliefs relating to equality and unity, but in doing so, they prevent any productive growth in their communities.

You see the community member unify with the Nazi army, and Hitler. This unity prospers throughout Hitler’s speeches at each rally. During rally speeches Hitler preached the message of the future, that can flourish, and with stand other civilizations. This future would be controlled through socialism; eliminating

This quote expresses her feeling while the Nazis were rising. I had thought that she was in dark room confused and wandering around seeing opportunities hoping it was not a dream. The metaphor that I just used was to explain in my way that would try to help others understand. She was scared about what shops and schools to go to. They had made a separate shops and schools just for the Jewish. Soon they will realize that the problem in hand will be just more than discrimination among religious beliefs, but  the death of many. This also shows some connections with the activity appearing across the globe of people who are suffering due to the government. This has also reminded me of most of the discrimination against the blacks from whites. The

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson deals with many themes in very few pages, but the most intriguing are the death and violence, which seem completely unexpected. This short story can be seen as a perfect example of Rene Girard’s theories about sacrifice, desire, and ‘scapegoat’ mechanism, which is what this essay will endeavor to illustrate.

"As the Nazis tightened their grip on Krakow, Jews were barraged with all kinds of insulting caricatures. Demeaning posters appeared in both Polish and German, depicting us as grotesque, filthy creatures, with large crooked noses. Nothing about these pictures made any sense to me....I found myself studying all our noses. None was particularly big. I couldn't understand why the Germans would want to make us look like something we were not." (Pg. ) Not all the Jews had dark hair, and not all polish or german people had blue eyes and blonde hair. They were also discriminated because of their religion. Today I have a freedom, it doesn’t matter what skin color I have or what I wear or what I believe. Back then it was very legal for german people to discriminate Jews. Even if there were people who tried to help them, they couldn’t because they would get killed also. Lion didn’t understand that when he got out of the concentration camp. "As I walked out of the ghetto with its tombstone-crowned walls and along the streets of Krakow, I was dumbfounded to see that life seemed just as it had been before I entered the ghetto...I stared at the clean, well-dressed people, busily moving from place to place...Had they not known what we had been suffering just a few blocks away? How could they not have known? How could they not have done something to help us?...They showed absolutely no interest

Shirley Jackson is able to convey a deeper understanding of sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, and various gender roles implied by society through the illustration of a corrupt tradition. By breaking down these core concepts in a way which the reader can better comprehend, both Gayle Whittier and Fritz Oehlschlaeger are able to emphasize misogyny and the unfair treatment of women within the short story “The Lottery.”

The film presented numerous speeches by people of the Nazi party and Hitler. Hitler’s speeches depicted the idea of unity, which he directed to different groups of people - from men of the army to the youth. To the youth he states that they are the future of the nation, therefore they should not let class divisions come between them, rather they must come together under solidarity. Hitler states that the people must unite in order to regain the greatness and strength of the nation, that was lost during World War

what looked like spirits, music hitting on beat. The entire regiment of soldiers in line, massed together creates a feeling these men of their present day have now combined with the fallen men of the past, yet forever fighting and standing for Germany together. It was all about setting the stage of each scene so that an emotional tie could be made. James M. Mayo, write about how important it is setting the stage in Propaganda with Design: Environmental Dramaturgy in the Political Rally. “The design coordinators of staged events are involved in the art of impression management. Their objective is the visual and auditory control of desired impressions. Coordinators are oriented toward increasing participation without the propagandees knowing the intended objective, and the propagandists maneuver their instruments to secure desired actions (Mayo 26). Another form of propaganda was Hitler’s speeches and the way he spoke. During Hitler’s speeches he would say things like “I, you and us” “for you are flesh of my flesh and blood of our blood” this puts everyday Günter on the same level as das Führer and the fallen heroes together. How could one not get emotionally overwhelmed ready to join the fight? David B. Hinton writes in “Triumph of the Will”:Document or Artifice?” In a hypocritical note, the rally itself was officially convened in the memory of the recently departed Hindenburg, who was never before favorably regarded by the Nazis. It was not his memory, but his death which

These leaflets tried to appeal to German citizens’ judgement, intuition, and guilt. They elaborate on the moral failure of German inaction and asks for an intellectual revolt against the National Socialist party: “Is this a sign that the Germans…have sunk into a fatal lack of conscience from which they will never, never awake? It seems to be so… if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest…” (Rabinbach and Gilman 856). To this group, resistance against Hitler and his potential demise, meant that “there would be law and order for everyone. Everyone would be safe from arbitrary acts. Not only the yes-men” (Rothemund). They resisted Hitler’s power by writing slogans on walls and spreading the printed leaflets throughout Munich University in broad daylight. They felt like this was the most effective way to influence students’ minds and to raise their concerns about the fate of their country. They chose to ignore the dangers of distributing such material because they thought that the possibility of igniting the campus with anti-war passion was worth the risk. They further their resistance while they were on the stand in People’s Court. Hans and Sophie did not hold bold their beliefs and made it evident that they were disappointed in the government. Hans stated that “Germany is bleeding to death and wants peace” (Rothemund). He

Nowadays, mass movement is defined as an assimilation process, where people throw away their own personal identities and follow submissively the orders of their leaders. The idea of people being obedient to some of the cruelest orders, such as killing millions of people in the Holocaust, surprises many people. Thus, many authors decide to find out the answer by bringing up many opinions about the creation of the mass movement in their own books or plays for discussion. One of those authors is Eric Hoffer, who suggests that a mass movement is created by the cooperation between “the man of words”, “the fanatic”, and “the man of actions” (147). In fact, he points out that the three groups have the same craving for something new and different that they believe can only be obtained through a revolution. At the same time, Tony Kushner also offers his own belief on the topic through his play “A Bright Room Called Day” by establishing a setting in Berlin, where people follow their own party in a fight against the development of a Nazi government. Moreover, many characters in the play perform somewhat similar roles to the three groups’ duties described by Hoffer. In fact, the characteristics of Baz as an outsider and a man of words, Agnes as a fanatic who joins the party out of boredom, and Zillah as a person of action who refuses to accept the Reagan government will be discussed in this essay to identify the similarities and differences between the viewpoints of two authors about