The Lottery Short Story Analysis

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” (Twain). The Lottery begins during the summer. A small, seemingly normal, town is gathering to throw the annual “Lottery”. In the end, the townspeople—children included—gather around and stone the winner to death, simply because it was tradition. The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective. “I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). As humans develop as a race, their practices should develop with them. Shirley Jackson develops the

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is an interesting short story taking place in a small town during the twentieth century. The town is getting ready to hold their annual lottery. Readers, however, do not know what the lottery entails until the end of the story where the narrator reveals that the “winner” is to be stoned to death in an unusual ritual. The story shows the danger of following traditions without practical reasoning. By evaluating the three criteria: an engaging or suspenseful plot, a well-structured story, and a satisfying conclusion, readers can thoroughly analyze the effectiveness of the author in creating a well-written story with a strong central idea.

“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.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, is a shorty story about annual lottery drawing that has been a tradition for ages. In the lottery drawing all the town members must participate and the other members of the town then stones the “winner” of the lottery to death. The people of the town participate in this because it has been a tradition over time and no one ever stops to question how wrong this is until they are the one chosen. Tradition to this town is more sacred than human life.

Shirley Jackson is known for her creative writing and plot twisting stories such as “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Lottery”. Jackson always finds a way to leave the reader somewhat confused and wanting to read more. In both of these stories it is a small town where everyone knows one another but something about each of these towns isn't right. In “The Lottery” it turns out that each year, one family, then individual from that family is chosen to be stoned to death for a sacrifice. Then in “The Possibility of Evil” it turns out that one old woman has been writing rude anonymous letters to the people of the town. In both essays Jackson uses many literary devices that help her create these stories that she is so known for. Some of the literary devices she uses are situational and verbal irony, and mood and foreshadowing. She uses a fair amount of all three of these throughout her short stories.

Traditions are widespread among many different people and cultures; It is an explanation for acting without thinking. Not all traditions are a good thing, though, and blindly following them can lead to harsh consequences. The villagers in a small town in “The Lottery” gather together annually to participate in this tradition, where one person in the town is randomly chosen in a drawing to be violently stoned to death by citizens. It has been around for seventy-seven years and everyone partakes in it. People always attend, showing the importance of tradition amongst the society. However, in the short story, “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses many literary devices to show that traditions are not always meant to be followed.

In this essay I will be doing a compare and contrast between the two stories “The Lottery” by Chris Alani and “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Both stories were good, and had a deep meaning behind both stories that leaves the readers wondering why the stories had to end in the way they did. Now I’ll start off by giving a summary of both stories so you can know and understand my point of view better.

The story begins with a small town on a beautiful sunny day showing the children innocently collecting rocks near the town square, but was it an innocent act? The lottery would start around 10 o'clock.

People think winning the lottery is a good thing. However, in Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery” the winner gets something very crucial, getting stoned to death. Shirley Jackson uses, foreshadowing, the attitude of the villagers, and the subtleness of the black box, to provide the gruesome ending of the story for the reader. Making the story, eerie, serious, and horrifying, the story takes an unexpected twist; the reader will soon realize that the lottery is not what they thought it would be.

In the short story “the Lottery” by Shirley Jackson has a very unique twist and different traditions. This story is about how the whole community is coming together for a gathering every once a year. It is not any happy gathering that people might think it would be. The lottery is a tradition that the community has picked up after years back and still follows this tradition. They forgot most of the whole rituals but they don’t forget the important part which is the part of stoning the person to death. The lottery is a cruel thing they do every year and they don’t plan of stopping. This involves the whole community to join in a circle in the middle of town.

an obscure and violent tradition takes place. The story depicts a group of antiquated villagers exercising this violent tradition in which the winner is stoned to death without a clear purpose or reason. This story creates a contrasting effect with today’s modern traditions in which we still see tradition’s harmful effects take place collectively. In “The Lottery” and

Little Davy and his friends wake up on a beautiful summer morning fully prepared to stone someone to death. More than likely tied to an irrational event, the boys will continue this annual practice without knowing their purpose. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson utilizes symbols and irony to develop the theme of tradition while criticizing the inhumanity of mankind.

In “The Lottery”, a yearly tradition of a lottery takes place in a small town except the winner gets stone to death.

“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 the story “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is about a village that celebrates a very old tradition that is celebrated every June. Except it’s not any kind of tradition that someone would expect to be “safe”, it’s a very brutal tradition that everyone fears about giving them chills running down their spine. The tradition is thought as a “lottery” where a participant pulls a card out of a raffle, if their card has no dot on it, the participant is safe, but if it does, then that participant gets stoned to death by a large crowd of other participants causing the death of an innocent man or woman every June. I believe that the theme of “The Lottery” is about the tradition that many people want to give up but are too afraid to because