Thesis Statement For The Lottery

Stoning a young, innocent girl to death seems like an indescribable horror. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, is about a little village of people that all share one thing in common, an annual tradition. Everyone in the village draws a piece of paper from a box to see who “wins.” On this certain day, the Hutchinson family won the drawing. To their horror, the young daughter Tessie, got chosen. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson used the symbolic death of Tessie to illustrate that by sticking with old traditions for no reason, it is deactivating critical thinking, which can lead to destruction and ignorance.

“People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth”, said by Roberto Bolano. There are many different perceptions on the events that occur in “The Lottery”, “The Fun They Had”, and also “Eye of the Beholder.” I feel that in “The Lottery”, Tessie was right for arguing against winning the yearly tradition of the lottery. Margie was right for feeling that the past schools were better in “The Fun They Had”, and Janet was right for contrasting herself from the others in “Eye of the Beholder.” Individuals may distinguish their interpretations on distinct feelings or statements.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story that shows the most shocking elements of humanity. The ending surprises the reader by coming out of nowhere, and shows the brutality that people are capable of. New Yorker Readers were shocked to the point of outrage at the time of its publishing. They were both certain that it was “perverted” and “gratuitously disagreeable,” but also that they didn’t “know what it’s about” (Franklin). Jackson herself hoped the story would “shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). This shock is very effective, and is in part possible because of how Jackson portrays her characters. She sets the story up to shock the reader by leaving only slight hints, but also by effectively showing how the characters themselves see the event. Jackson highlights the commonplace nature of the event. She portrays the event as a dated ritual, and explains the ways that the people of the town resist it. T ending feels like a surprise because it is brutal and because the characters themselves resist understanding the ritual. Jackson makes the true meaning of the event invisible to everyone except the readers and the victims themselves.

One aspect that explains the villagers’ obedience towards this terrible tradition stems from Carol Tavris’ ideology about how society favors group submission over moral rebellion. In the short story, the unfortunate family that selected the marked paper was the Hutchinson family. The mother of the family, Tessie Hutchinson, was clearly distraught and believes that the owner of the black box, Mr. Summers did that intentionally. Knowing that one of the family members will be sacrificed, Ms. Hutchinson tries to prevent their doom by accusing Mr.Summers for “‘You didn’t give him time enough to take any he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!’”(Jackson 3). It is ironic because Tessie has likely stoned other villagers in the past, but when her family is selected that year, she then tries to claim that this is unjust and unfair. Despite her outcries, the villagers explain that everyone had the same chance, and her husband told his wife to “‘Shut up, Tessie,’”(Jackson 3). Even when a barbaric deed is going to be committed, the rest of the villagers conform to its rules. From an outsider’s perspective, this ignorance to morals and willingly following unjust laws is absurd. But this rationale is be explained through Carol Tavris’ “In Groups We Shrink”. In her piece, Tavris explains how people in groups behave far differently than individuals. She proposed that people in groups “... behave badly because they aren’t

This Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. It was first published in the New Yorker on June 26th 1948. The story takes place on June 27th in a small American village with a population of around 300 people. June 27th is the annual celebration of the lottery, which, in the story, takes places on the same day in nearly every city, town and village. Every person in the village has to take place in the lottery. Due to the small size of the population, the takes place in less than two hours. The townspeople gather in the town square where Mr. Summers, the lottery official, and each head of household draws a slip of paper from an old black box. One of the characters, Tessie Hutchinson, arrives at the event at the last minute,

Firstly, it is necessary to define the unique play experience and dimensions of the novel in order to focus and make sense of the chosen selection. Life’s Lottery is a speculative fiction novel, written in the second person perspective, in which the reader assumes the role of the protagonist, Keith Marion. The reader should treat the work as an interactive game book, participating in the unfolding of events by making subjective choices. It is a branching plot narrative because the book proceeds from the choices the reader makes, and the plot unfolds from this assemblage, reading as a novel would. There are multiple genres the novel can encompass based on the storyline of the choices made and these paths can diverge wildly. The reader is directed

Lotteries have made the government over $150 billion since they began in 1964. Lotteries began in 1964 for a new way for people to gamble. It was directly ran by the government because the assumption was that only direct government ownership and control of gambling could guarantee the exclusion of criminal elements. Lotteries are now run by the state as that concern fades over time with the growth of commercial gambling. Also, lotteries are an effective and ethical way for states to earn money for education.

The short story "The lottery" is a shocking text to read. I think that the main goal of this text is to denounce some injustices there was with the community back in the 50s. At the beginning of the story, everything seems to be normal: "June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green" . But after few pages, we can easily see that there is something wrong with these people.

A short story is a form of storytelling that does not waste space. It serves the reader details only relevant to the storyline. It aims to engage the reader immediately, by not filling the story with useless details but only that to which is necessary and holds their attention. A short story contains very little to no background information. It only provides that to which is required for the story. Each sentence helps develop the storyline and begins as quickly as they end taking the reader from the start to the end on a roll-a-coaster of emotions as they read. What brings a short story to life, is how the story flows and makes the reader feel grabbing their curiosity with little background information, catching their attention with each detail, and bringing them in with the quick developments of the storyline.

Sherley’s Jackson short story, “The Lottery” tells the story of villagers that hold a terrible lottery tradition every year. Even though the story begins with the audiences with a bad close to the community by competing in a crisis tradition on a very important day, and at the end with a death of the “winner” by stoning the person that leads to s discussions between the people, and continued to be revise in modern days (Jackson). The “theory that based on the critical perspective of the story on the reader and his or her perspective” of the text (Parker 314). Jackson reveals two attitudes in her story, the first one is a position to select an individual, and the other one is the ideas that people are victims of this terrible tradition that

Winning the lottery can be a big deal for most people. Some people use the money wisely and most let it slip through their fingers. The winning lottery can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on the person uses it. I believe that it would impact my life in tremendous ways, i can’t say either it would have a positive or a negative impact.

“The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson takes place on the twenty-seventh of June in a small town in the United States. The beginning of the story starts off talking about the local children gathering around and the town square where the lottery is held. At the square, the little boys begin to gather stones from small to large ones and pile them up. The next people to show up at the village square are the husbands as they are discussing daily life amongst each other, then finally, the wives begin the arrive as they talk all about the towns biggest gossips. Unlike other towns that participate in the lottery, where it can take a couple of days to complete, this small town can do it in just a couple of hours due to the small population consisting of about three hundred people. One of the big discussions at the lottery on this day was that other towns were getting rid of the lottery. There is one man, Old Man Warner, the town elder is disgusted of the thought of ending the lottery. He has been around for the lottery since he was a child. The black box that the paper is drawn from is a very significant item to the lottery. The current black box is thought to be made from parts of the original black box. “One by one each male head of the household (or woman if there was no man to take her place) walked up to the box in alphabetical order and drew a slip of paper from the box. They were asked to keep it folded in the palms of their hands without looking. When every family had a

When one thinks of a lottery, they imagine winning a large sum of money. Shirley Jackson uses the setting in The Lottery to foreshadow an ironic ending. The peaceful and tranquil town described in this story has an annual lottery, and you can’t possibly guess what the “prize” is…

In The Lottery, the setting is a small town with a population of approximately three hundred people. An important theme in this story is recognizing the dangers of blindly following tradition. Once a year in this small town, there is a “lottery”, unfortunately this isn’t like any other lottery where you win money. Instead, on this day, one of the villagers is stoned to death because of a superstition that this town has. They believe that by killing one of their own, they will be blessed with good crop for a year. So, for several years, they have continued this tradition. The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become a part of their town’s traditions. The townspeople feel powerless to change even though no one is stopping them from changing their so called “tradition”. All of the town’s residents slip a piece of paper containing their name into a black box; even the children are subject to the lottery’s death sentence. One unlucky name is drawn from the box and stoned to death. The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim. Each year, someone new is chosen and killed. No one is safe. What makes the lottery so entertaining is that everyone turns on the person who is chosen. Friends, and family participate in the stoning with as much enthusiasm as the rest of the villagers.

A family is chosen each year by a drawing to participate in the lottery. The outcome of the drawing is that one member of that family is chosen to be stoned to death by their family and fellow villagers. “The Lottery” depicts the pointless violence that has now influenced society that violence is acceptable. Shirley Jackson wanted to send the message that harming our own kind would not benefit anyone in any type of way. Harming our own people just brings sadness and pain to society. The stoning of innocent people in this rural town was based on an outdated superstition that would help their crop, and thus was known as a tradition.. From the point of view from the chosen family, the wife was furious, the children were sad, and the husband had no emotion towards the situation. The men looked at the lottery as just another day; they did not think that annual stoning of a person was wrong. An argument that will be discussed in this paper is that forms of fictions such as this leads to the actual increase in violence all around the world. A counterargument that will be presented and discussed in this paper is that fictional violence is fake. There is no connection between fictional violence and real-life