The Lottery Literary Analysis

Figurative language is a strategy that authors have used over the years to give the reader different perspectives on the piece that they are reading about. In her short Story, “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson writes about a small town that has a tradition known as the lottery. The way that the lottery works, is that there is black box with pieces of paper in it. The pieces of paper have the family names of every family in town. The last name standing then has to go into an elimination round with the people within the family. Each family member draws out of the black box, and the family member that pulls the slip of paper with the black dot gets stoned to death. In her short story, Jackson utilizes symbolism in the form of Old Man Warren, the black box and the pile of stones to demonstrate how tradition can be blinding without even knowing it.

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

1) The tone, mood or atmosphere in the story begins with that of happiness and euphoria, by setting us up with a wonderful day that most everyone would enjoy.

When writing, authors use various writing techniques and devices to better their story. From onomatopoeia, and similes, to mood and setting, these devices are what make the stories we read astounding. Atmosphere specifically is imperative to a great writing piece as it is prevalent throughout the entire story. From the first three words to the last three words, the reader is focused on the mood they are interpreting from the storyline. In “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, the mood is what makes the story so amazing and helps us understand the theme.

Writing is another form of art in which authors create visual images for the world to see. Authors come from all over the world: English, American, Hispanic writers. There is a diversity of writers. Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer who wrote depressing short stories. His writing had a great influence on writers like Shirley Jackson, who was an American writer as well. Her stories were horrifying, but truth-telling. The kind that parents would find disturbing and would not want their children to be reading. Shirley just wrote books that explained life, she made people see the truth in others. She wanted to see the capacity that humans had for evil. Her stories were mainly about the reality of life and its horrific truths. Throughout

Would you believe that there was once a village where everyone would partake in a terrible event, but think it was innocent because of how they blindly followed a tradition? The short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson communicates this theme by showing how the villagers participate in a lottery every year. In life, there are people who follow tradition because the have to, or they are used to following without question. The author, Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, California. In 1937, Shirley Jackson attended Syracuse University where she began to write short stories. She was famous for the short story, “The Lottery,” and her best seller novel, “The Haunting of Hill House”. Shirley Jackson was

All around the world today thousands of people die from murder and the numbers increase every year. Our world is filled with violence and tragedies that keep increasing, just like in, Shirley Jackson's story “The Lottery.” The characters in a small village choose someone to stone to death each year because of tradition. As this tradition continues, more and more people die as time passes. All of the towns folk grow more and more nervous, hoping not to get picked. They gather in the town square to choose the person who is killed in this unfortunate event as you meet characters like the hutchinsons, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Summers as they go through the fear of being picked. As the children pile up stones that they use for the killing. All

In the short, dark but surprisingly twisty story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the townspeople have a lottery to decide who will bear the sins of the town or rather who will be the scapegoat of the town. Numerous times it was mentioned in the story that tradition is why the sacrifice kept going throughout the years. Traditions are a set of custom, rituals and/or belief passed from generation to generation, believed if done right will change the outcome of certain situations. In “The Lottery” their ritual is to once a year have drawing to pick a member a chosen family to undergo death by stoning. Even though they are doing something wicked for the good of the whole town, it still doesn’t feel right to most of the residents. Because

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a story that happens in a small village with roughly 300 citizens. She was a native of San Fransico, who wrote many conventional novels. Her purpose in writing the story is to graphically demonstrate, pointless violence, and general inhumanity in people lives (Kennedy, Gioia, and Revoyr (2013). The story happens during the summer, while the children are out of school portraying formally a longtime ritual grounded in tradition. Consequently, individuals who wins the lottery will be stoned to death in a selected at random. It was no rational cause or justification for singling out one person in the village to murder each year. Similarly, the lottery reminds me of the stoning I have read in the Bible concerning

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you go on a ride of emotions with the characters in the development of their lives during this ritualistic Lottery that takes place. The ideal of the story is a lottery is head every year in which all the townspeople's names are put in a lottery and drawn from. The person whose name is chosen will become the chose one of the town and use as a sacrifice of sorts. They will be sacrificed as an offering to be blessed with better crops for the following year. So as the happy townsfolk do their “wonderful” lottery the one chosen wasn’t so happy as the rest. Tessie Hutchinson was chosen and has to be sacrificed by stoning for the greater good of her village, but once chosen her views on the whole matter swing in a heartbeat. The whole theme of the story is how tradition for some can vary for people to people, but In the lottery is it their tradition wrong or right in there minds. We have to determine if the mob of townsfolk are wrong or right for stoning the housewife Tessie to death for their beliefs in the lottery.

In Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, multiple different aspects of gothic literature are shown. In a small town, where many families met annually, the “lottery” takes place, conducted by Mr. Summers. Families gather around together, and the men of the household draw out slips of paper from a black box once their name is called. One piece of paper has a black symbol on it, which no one wants to get. It is clear in this story that there is a bleak setting, tortured characters, and dark events.

Imagine a world where one person a year is chosen to die. That is the world that Shireley Jackson thought of as she wrote the story “The Lottery”. Even though the plot of “The Lottery” is on the morbid side of literature, Jackson had a deeper meaning to the horrid event. In the story, Jackson shows that big change is a slow process by looking back on how things used to be. First Jackson looks back on what has been lost, the people’s reluctance to give up the past, and the insight from two characters.

Shirley Jackson 's ‘The Lottery’ is a classic American short story known for its shocking twist ending and its insightful commentary on cultural traditions. It was originally printed in The New Yorker magazine in 1948.The tale begins with all the villagers gathering in the town square for the annual lottery as if it were just another day. Children are playing with stones while the adults swap stories of farming and gossip. It 's not until the lottery begins, over halfway through the story that we start to suspect that all is not as it seems. Literature continues to be a means to expose the darkness of that inequality (Gioia, 2013). Writers carry the burden of exposing the darkness that lies at the heels of ignorance as Jackson so

To start with, some plot elements give away many clues about what the lottery actually is in the beginning of the short story, such as, children gather to make piles of rocks and families protesting that some towns are dropping this tradition, thinking it is an act of murder, yet this village still believes it is not. For example, Mrs. Adams states, "Some places have already quit lotteries.", (4).The people were cheerful and unaffiliated before the lottery, but later on we begin to see that once a family is chosen, they begin to protest that this event is unfair.

Every society in the modern world has some form of tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation, and no matter what the custom is, people will continue to follow it due to the human nature to resist change. Even if there is an urge for change, it will likely be suppressed and seen as an act of rebellion as most people follow tradition simply because “that’s just how it is”, and never seem to question why. Suzanne Collin’s novel The Hunger Games and Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” best illustrate this point by showing how a violent annual tradition affects a society and its innocent people. The Hunger Games has such uncanny similarities to “The Lottery” that it almost seems as if Collins used Jackson’s story as a source of inspiration for her novel. Both The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” are extremely similar thematically in the sense that sheepishly following tradition can often be detrimental to society because it can lead to adverse consequences such as death, ignorance, and a society with no desire to change.