The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” tells of an event that is held once a year. Where a drawing is held and one person is chosen to be stoned to death. The tone and the point of view this story it is written in helps emphasize the meaning of the story. You don’t know what is coming so the ending has a greater impact on the reader. The characters lack of emotion highlights the message of this story which appears to be about how easy it is to follow along with something just because it is considered a

The lottery is usually associated with beating the odds and winning something extravagant. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”, the reader is led to believe the story is about something cheerful and happy given the setting of a warm summer day and children out of school for the summer. Jackson turns winning the lottery into a bad thing. Of 300 villagers Tessie Hutchinson shows up late, claiming she forgot about the annual lottery drawing, but seems very excited to have made it on time. When Tessie was in no danger she is gossiping with neighbors and encourages her husband to draw for the winner. Jackson curiously builds up the character of Tessie so that it seems she is blinded by tradition until she becomes a victim of it

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.

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

Shirley Jackson, the author of the short story “The Lottery” is an unusual story of a town caught in a trap of following tradition. Shirley Jackson uses many symbols in the story to relate to the theme. By doing this it helps the reader understand the story and the message she is trying to get across. Jackson uses tone, setting, and symbolism to conduct a theme for her readers. By doing this she creates connections to the theme by using the black box and old man Warner as a symbol.

The Lottery, a short story by author Shirley Jackson, is a representation of our somewhat conformist society as a whole, within communities, not only in America, but around the world. Jackson, utilizes small town settings and symbolism through her creative writing style. The Lottery, was written in 1948, approximately three years after the liberation of the World War II concentration camp Auschwitz. Not surprisingly, some people still deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Jackson illustrates that even a small towns, tight knit population, can discount evil, and evil is still prevailing in our current society (for example: the terrorist attacks on September 11; the massacres in France.).

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson uses extensive symbols and metaphors. It is a short story which has been equally appreciated as well as rejected by audience. The main themes of this story are those of tradition and scapegoat. The story begins with the author informing the reader about the time the lottery is going to begin by using certain phrases like “tractors and taxes” (Jackson, 76). Furthermore, the writer narrates the dress of Mr. Summers to be a “clean white shirt and blue jeans” (Jackson 78) which further supports the arrival of the lottery.

In “The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, Jackson uses the third person objective point of view to narrate the story of a small unnamed town – presumably during the early Twentieth century – that practices a dark event annually. True to the fly-on-the-wall description of third person, the narrator of the story details the events unfolding from an objective and unbiased point of view, almost as if he or she is watching the entire scene from the outside. Jacksons’ choice of narration is an effective method to keep the reader oblivious from the truth behind this dark event. The narrator only gives small hinted details to what “The Lottery” really is leaving the most significant and unsettling detail until the end, that the “winner” of the Lottery is stoned to death by the other villagers. The narration style is almost identical to that of a bored reporter which counterparts the apathy of the townspeople, through the unprejudiced narrative voice, the dark an effect of uncertainty grows while the twisted ending of the story remains a surprise to the reader.

Should tradition be a rational for committing irrational actions in life? In Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson really poses the question of whether or not tradition should be a rational for committing irrational actions in life and emphasizes the point of traditions potential effect of controlling one's actions on the basis of whatever traditions that a person values. "The Lottery" is a story where the day starts out as a nice day, but at the end of the day, the result of the outcome of the village's lottery is that the villages society stones Tessie to death in regards to the village's tradition. Jackson did not like the lottery along with its outcome and there are many different ways that Jackson presents that. Overall, the ways that Jackson shows her dislike of the Lottery is by the tone she uses, her character description and by the symbols she uses.

Can one individual change a large group of people? Can the effort of one person be enough to break up a faulty tradition practicing by a society? In most cases the answer would be ‘yes’ and in some ‘no’. Many individuals try and succeed but many fail just like the main character Tessie Hutchinson in Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”. When someone hears the word “lottery”, he or she may think that someone will be rewarded with prize. But “The Lottery” By Shirley Jackson is different than what one thinks. In the story, a lottery is going to be conducted not like Mega Million or Powerball one play here. In the story, the person who wins the lottery is stoned to death instead of being rewarded with the prize.

To understand the whole story’s message, it is important to look at one of the author’s literary element as evidence. One of the three elements Shirley Jackson uses is her style. She uses her style to hide the brutal of the lottery, and the readers just realize how bad it is at the end of the story. From the beginning of the story, the narrator describes the lottery. Although Jackson chooses to set her story in such a nondescript place, her readers still know a little bit about the lottery. One of her purposes is to set the story not in detail because she wants the readers to feel curious and to make them guess what really happens in the lottery so that later in the story they will feel shocked about how cruel it is. This is one of Jackson’s styles to heighten the suspense because the readers only know the information that the narrator provides. In the first paragraph of the story, the narrator says, “The morning of June 27th was clear and

It is unknown how Jackson could write about such a harsh and terrible incident before the world could be categorized as unsafe. “It has been noted that Jackson saw herself as a psychic even as a young girl,” (Hicks). Jackson was a gifted writer and many people looked into her other writings after this story was published. “The Lottery” was a shocking, yet wonderful story contains an exceeding amount of irony and symbolism for the relatively short length. The irony and symbolism play a significant for this story; however, the most important feature is the theme. The main theme Shirley Jackson portrays in this story is the civilized and normal behavior about violence. It is a foreshadowing message to the future, which is now the present. It can also be known as hypocrisy, because citizens are pretending to be okay with actions due to a tradition. A tradition that should be ended, and never be

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” has been described as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature". Jackson tells the gripping story of a fictional small town which observes an annual ritual known as "the lottery". The seemingly peaceful town houses the dark tradition. Readers are kept on the edges of their seats. Shirley Jackson does this by creating a feeling of suspense through her use of point of view, withholding information, and symbolism.

“The Lottery” is a mysterious and well-thought out story written by Shirley Jackson. This story isn’t at all as it seems, it is actually quite deceiving. When reading the title, one would think this story is about a town having a lottery, and a winner is claiming a prize. This is all true, but we don’t get to know what the actual lottery is until the end of the story, which isn’t money. It is something far worse. The theme of the story is about tradition. Every year this town had a ottery that all the townspeople participate in. This story has multiple tones, such as peaceful, anxious, and horrific that supports the theme. The tone constantly shifts throughout the story.

The lottery is an iconic horror story, written by Shirley Jackson in 1948. Although the story is short, there is great meaning packed into Jackson’s words including symbolism, irony, and foreshadowing. She incorporated these components of literature to strengthen the story’s overall message: following traditions blindly leads to unnecessary violence and general inhumanity in life, thus they should be looked at in a new light.