The Lottery Short Story

“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 The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective.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

It was the morning of June 27th, ten years after Tessie Hutchinson was stoned to death. So much had happened during this decade after her death. Horace Dunbar was stoned last year, and Mrs. Graves the year before. The village now consisted of about 500 citizens, and with the village growing every year the lottery became more and more necessary for the town to prosper. But still people doubted the value of the lottery and tried to preclude it. Back when the year Tessie was stoned, the Adams were talking about how other towns were giving up the lottery. Every year there were a larger amount of people opposing the lottery.

Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is a short story about the annual gathering of the villagers to conduct an ancient ritual. The ritual ends in the stoning of one of the residents of this small village. This murder functions under the guise of a sacrament that, at one time, served the purpose of ensuring a bountiful harvest. This original meaning, however, is lost over the years and generations of villagers. The loss of meaning has changed the nature and overall purpose of the lottery. This ritual is no longer a humble sacrifice that serves the purpose of securing the harvest but instead is a ceremony of violence and murder only existing for the pleasure found in this violence.

In Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," what appears to be an ordinary day in a small town takes an evil turn when a woman is stoned to death after "winning" the town lottery. The lottery in this story reflects an old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order to encourage the growth of crops. But this story is not about the past, for through the actions of the town, Jackson shows us many of the social ills that exist in our own lives.

    "The Lottery," a short story written by Shirley Jackson, is a tale about a disturbing social practice.  The setting takes place in a small village consisting of about three hundred denizens.  On June twenty-seventh of every year, the members of this traditional community hold a village-wide lottery in which everyone is expected to participate.  Throughout the story, the reader gets an odd feeling regarding the residents and their annual practice.  Not until the end does he or she gets to know what the lottery is about.  Thus, from the beginning of the story until almost the end, there is an overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen due to the Jackson's effective

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” is about a bizarre ritual performed in a town in which the townspeople proceed to follow every year. In a black, worn box they place all the names of the community. Once all the names are placed inside, Mr. Summers draws a name. After the name is chosen, this member will be stoned to death by the others in the community. Tessie Hutchinson in the story tries to reject the repetitive tradition of the lottery.

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.

“The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, is a short story with an unexpected outcome. The townspeople gather on June 27th in the warm summer air to hold their annual lottery. The lottery starts off by each head-of-household drawing. The family who receives the slip of paper with the black dot then has each member of the family draw. The final winner--the one who has the paper with the dot--receives the shocking and vile prize of being stoned to death by their fellow townspeople. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, uses irony to show how the actions of the townspeople directly reflects ideals society has placed on the entire town.

Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” shows the reader that the human race will do any horrible act for success, in this case holding a town lottery where the winner is stoned to death in the towns square in hopes of a bountiful corn crop come during harvest time. The lottery is a tradition held in the town annually on June 27 and is done right as the corn is ready to become fruitful. Even in the day and age where technology is used for farming (tractors, plows) to till and harvest the land, this is a communal tradition that cannot be broken.

The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a town’s tradition of ‘the lottery’. It takes place in an ordinary town, but has a tradition of a lottery in which the ‘winner’ gets stoned. Most people in the town want to keep the lottery, as it is tradition and is important to the town’s history. Other lines in the story suggest the town’s people seem like they want to stop it. A lesson the story suggests is tradition is not always a good thing.

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

Displayed in the short story, “The Lottery”, author Shirley Jackson demonstrates the actions of a group of people who live with ways of tradition. Each year on June 27th, entire villages of people gather in the town square and each family pick a paper to determine which will continue the tradition of the lottery. The true intentions of this story is not fully revealed until the end, where the reader learns what the ‘lottery’ really is. As part of the tradition, the person who is unlucky enough to get the only paper with a black dot drawn on it is to be stoned to death by the remaining townspeople. When faced with the results of this tradition, hesitation is not shown by the people of the town as they pick up stones to kill the chosen person with.

The setting of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is in a small town with a population of approximately three hundred people. Some of the key themes in “The Lottery,” are a woman by the name of Shirley Jackson represents a nation of scapegoats, as someone who is blamed for the bad of society and banished to expel sin and allow for renewal. Mob psychology governs the people of the town, and they abandon their reasoning, to act, to a large extent, with cruelty. The story “The Lottery” describes a small fictional town which observes—as many other communities, both large in size and small, throughout contemporary America—an annual tradition.

“The Lottery” a short story by Shirley Jackson, features a small town during the time of their lottery. The lottery is an annual event, organized by Mr. Summers. It is a highly important time, as the whole town comes to the town square on the day of the lottery. The guidelines are quite simple: everyone takes a slip of paper out of the symbolic black box, and the slip of paper with the black mark carved on it, is the “lucky winner”. But their definition of the lottery is different一usually, a lottery is a valuable thing to win. But when Tessie Hutchinson, the “lucky winner” gets her reward by getting stoned to death by the rest of the villagers, it is clear that winning this lottery can't be a good affair... So what is the purpose of this lottery? Rather than discontinuing the lottery, the town continues with it because they don't want to upset an old tradition.

In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, tells the story of a small town that gathers once a year to do a lottery. This isn’t your typical lottery. In this lottery the winner loses instead of winning. The winner is stoned to death as a part of “tradition”. The town people blindly follow this tradition and are unwilling to change. Tradition is one of the main themes in this story and it should be left alone.