The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

Throughout the work of Langston Hughes, and the documentary film, “The Lottery”, you find many similarities, and differences from today’s society and acceptance of black Americans. In today’s society these works and many others of the Harlem Renaissance era still hold true, but the most important is the African Americans reliance on God.

Within the first few lines of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" we are faced with such adjectives as clear, sunny, fresh and warmth. She goes on to paint a picture of small children just out of school for the summer, as the townspeople gather for the annual Lottery. This leads us to believe that the rest of the story is as cheery as the summer day initially described. We as the readers are virtually unaware of the horrible senseless events that lie ahead. Through the use of symbolism Shirley Jackson reveals the underlying decay of ethics that results from an empty ritual followed by narrow-minded people.

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.

Another theme that The Lottery and The Hunger Games share is a dystopian society. The Hunger Games takes place in a country called Panem. Panem is split into thirteen sections, the rich Capitol, and twelve districts. The Capitol’s government controls everything and dictates the districts what to do. The government views Panem as a utopian society, but everyone in the districts disagrees. The people living in the districts starve, and fend on their own. The people of the districts are treated unfairly because of that, but also because of “The Hunger Games.” This “game” is when each district sacrifices a male and a

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" depicts life in a provincial American town with rigid social norms. Mr. Summers symbolizes everything that is wrong with the town; he represents blind adherence to ritual, social rigidity, and resistance to change. His name corresponds with the seasonal setting of "The Lottery," too, drawing attention to the importance of his character in shaping the theme of the story. Summers is in charge of the central motif of the story, the lottery that takes the life of a human being. A predecessor to The Hunger Games, Jackson's "The Lottery" shares in common with its modern counterpart a theme of how groupthink places a stranglehold on both individuals and whole communities.

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.

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.

“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.

“The Lottery” describes the proceedings of a lottery in an American village, in which the winner of the lottery will be stoned to death. Most readers are shocked when they get to the ending, mainly because they would never expect something so horrific to be described with such normality. Perhaps the narrator of the “Lottery” themselves grew up with and is used to such a tradition. Perhaps to them, they are just describing a regular part of life. It can be said, then, that “The Lottery” depicts how a person’s surroundings play the role of guide, shaping their morals and ethics.

In the story, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, we are introduced to a story where traditions can be dangerous. It is a warm sunny day, and the time is approaching for the event to occur, the people gather in the town square and prepare for what they know happens every year. Slowly but surely, one by one they draw from the black box and the one that draws the right one, is chosen. The other villagers stone the chosen one to death. Although some readers may think this is just a normal story about a parable, it represents much more than just that. The author portrays a story about an attack on a small-town America. Shirley Jackson gives the reader this understanding by using the elements of irony, foreshadowing and symbolism.

“The Lottery”, in comparison to “The hunger games, are the same in some ways; but in

“This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.” These are the words of President Snow in the film The Hunger Games. He believes this game is how to hold onto authority and separate the rich from the poor. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson are about two societies that are dictatorial communities that are usually non-violent except for a certain time. The Lottery focuses on one city, whereas The Hunger Games looks at different districts. The two stories have major differences; in The Lottery there is no chance to live while in The Hunger Games there is a chance of survival, the latter is planned by the government whereas the former is carried out by the common people, and the two games are played very differently.

The connection between The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” is really a tale of two stories: one was instantly popular and had stellar reviews upon its release, the other was met with immediate backlash and ridicule. When “The Lottery” was first published, many people demanded an explanation from the author. However, when The Hunger Games was first published, it sold millions of copies and racked in hundreds of millions in movie sales. Nevertheless, “The Lottery” would eventually get the credit it deserved later as it was considered by Peter Prescott as “the most famous short story published by an American since World War II.” Today, it is read by the majority of high school students in America.

There are both similarities and differences between the annual event held in ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Lottery’. Although ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Lottery’ differ in the purpose of the annual event and the processes that lead to death, annual tradition in both ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Lottery’ was cruel and inhumane. To begin with, the purpose of annual event held in ‘The Lottery’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ is different. In ‘The

The citizens in “The Lottery” don’t view the lottery as a punishment; instead, the citizens view the lottery as a tradition because the lottery has gone on for so long. In fact, the citizens are so comfortable with the lottery that even children participated in the stoning ritual. The ritual was so normal to the people that a “soft laughter ran through the crowd” even though they may have been the next person picked to be stoned. Because they viewed the lottery as a tradition, Old Man Warner believed they should continue the lottery because “there's always been a lottery.” Unlike the citizens in “The Lottery,” the people in The Hunger Games regard the ritual in a negative aspect. These people consider the Hunger Games ritual as a form of “governmental oppression” (Geistfeld). Although the people knew they were being oppressed, the citizens were forced to tolerate the “power structures that they operate in rather than continually struggle against them” (Geistfeld). It is also evident that the people dislike the Hunger Games because Katniss describes the atmosphere of the ritual as “an air of grimness” (Collins). Alongside Katniss, people who have family members that were drawn consider the ritual to be several “painful weeks” because they will be watching their loved ones fight for lives (Collins). In addition to how people view the ritual, another difference is how many times a person can be entered into