The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

“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 deceptively simple story about a small town community that holds an annual lottery. Naturally, what makes the plot less simple is the way the story ends with one of the townspeople being stoned as a result of “winning” the lottery. A deeper look at the story reveals that the story is about tradition. Although tradition is often considered to be something positive, in “The Lottery,” tradition is something undesirable and even deadly.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Not everything is as it seems. Would you follow a tradition that you do not know the meaning of but has the potential to kill your friend every year? “The Lottery” by Shirely Jackson a story about an ancient, meaningless tradition still being practiced in the modern times. It proves unsubstantiated traditions are dangerous traditions by using irony, symbolism and foreshadowing. There are many literary devices used throughout the story, and the first of them is irony.

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,

In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” it is unique how little details all relate back to the theme of the story. The setting, and the way that Jackson describes it in great detail, helps to add not only a major shock at the end of the story, but also how the setting shapes the theme. Also, the personality and names of some of the characters can help foreshadow an eerie ending to the story. Lastly, the symbols that Jackson uses play possibly the greatest part in creating the theme of the story. The setting, characters, and symbols used by Jackson conveys how dangerous it could be to mindlessly follow tradition.

The story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was about a small agricultural community a long time ago that held lotteries because they believed it improved their crops. They would put a piece of paper for everyone in a box and every family had to pick a slip of paper from it, and the family who got the piece of paper with a mark on it put their papers back into the box and drew again. The member of the family whom received the marked was sacrificed, by being stoned to death by the villagers. In this story it teaches readers not to follow traditions blindly. One reason not to follow traditions blindly is because the tradition could be harmful.

The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small village that practices a sort of tradition or ritual that occurs every year on June 27th. A few villages have stopped doing this tradition of the lottery, with the exception of this particular village. Every year a person is chosen from the lottery and they are stoned by the people of this village. The second short story that will be focused on in this essay is “The Ones who Walk away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. This story is about a city that is full of joy, prosperity and beauty, but behind closed doors they keep a child locked in a dark and isolated basement.

To me it became apparent that “The Lottery” is an exceptional short story because of Shirley Jackson’s intended message. The message inside of this short story is meaningful and significant about how traditions are maintained in an individual’s life. I reason that the author’s idea was to show that morality can become meaningless when blindly following traditions. In the short story all of the members in the small community displayed how their tradition became a meaningless habit. I can relate to this issue by the unmoral tradition of slavery in the United States. These traditions were both blindly followed and become a regular part of an individual’s life.