The Use Of Scapegoats In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published on June 26, 1948. The story was initially met with negative critical reception due to its violent nature and portrayal of the potentially dangerous nature of human society. It was even banned in some countries. However, “The Lottery” is now widely accepted as a classic American short story and is used in classrooms throughout the country.

When we are younger we used to get our brother or sister and pick on another sibling. When mom or dad comes to yell at the person who started it we tend to pin it on someone else or you are the person who gets left with all the punishment. At one point in our lives we were blamed for something we didn't do or we were the person that pushed it onto someone else. Arthur Miller expresses a lot of scapegoating or being the scapegoat in The Crucible.

From my view it is the fault of many events, and not just one person to blame in.

Sometimes people get blamed for wrongdoings that they did not participate in. This was shown in Salem, Massachusetts, during the salem witch trials in the play The Crucible. The play was based in 1692, when a community of Puritans started accusing each other of of being witches and wizards. Innocent people that did not practice witchcraft were getting hanged and accused of being witches. Scapegoats have also been used in modern day with McCarthyism, which was a campaign against communist. Many people were blacklisted and lost their jobs even though many of these people did not belong to the communist party. This took place in 1950-1954 carried out by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Using scapegoats blames innocent people for wrongdoings, and accuses people of wrong doings.

In “The Lottery”, author Shirley Jackson portrays the importance of violence and inhumanity that is being shown throughout the community and how the townspeople play a major roll in it. Shirley Jackson believes that violence is huge within this community and she also believes that the community isn’t aware of their actions. Every year on June 27th, the community gathers at the town's square to attend the lottery. The folks who run this lottery are Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves (The Postmaster). Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves will randomly announce names from the lottery box. If the name announced was on the paper the family member selected, then the audience would throw stones at them until they were dead.

that farming is a way of life that is handed down from generation to generation,

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the story begins on a sunny day that imposes gossip and frenzy around the town. In this location, they conduct a “lottery” that involves the families of the town to go into a drawing. Once the drawing is done, the family that is chosen is forced to commence into another lottery between themselves. The winner of the lottery is used as a sacrifice for the town and is pelted by stones thrown from the community, including children. Furthermore, the basis of “The Lottery” has to do with psychological problems and influence. Psychoanalysis is built upon Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology, which asserts that the human mind is affected by their “unconscious that is driven by their desires and fears”

The act of blaming others for problems is a common phenomena that occurs not only in our society, but also in literature. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Pearl Prynne represents the scapegoat. Throughout the novel, the townspeople put the blame of Hester Prynne 's sin on Pearl and Hester grows as a person. Pearl gives Hester a daily reminder of her sin and Hester grows to becomes a happier, better person in response. In addition, another example of a scapegoat is Leonce Pontellier and the children, from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Edna Pontellier blames her husband and children for holding her back from reaching happiness and independence. All things considered, the

I think that Americans should be held responsible for their own health outcomes. However, some illnesses that people may have could not be their fault. With that said, I do not think it is fair for someone to be held responsible if the risk factors cannot be changed. For instance, a person could develop heart disease by being a male, heredity, or increasing age (Hahn, Payne, & Lucas, 2013). To further explain my example, I do not think someone who develops a disease from risk factors that cannot be changed. However, if someone smokes or is overweight, which are risk factors that can be changed to reduce the risks of heart disease. If a person chooses not to change their bad health habits, then at this point, they should be held responsible for their own health outcomes. Another example of why someone should be held responsible for their own health outcomes is if the person smokes. Smoking is not only dangerous to the smoker’s health, but it is

It has been present since the beginning of time. Misunderstanding and fear often leads to conditions where scapegoats are used. People don’t often seem to care about the complexities of the world around them. Instead they want easy answers to problems and a scapegoat is always a convenient out. In “The Lottery” we find that the ritual had become so mundane that Tessie Hutchinson had forgotten the lottery itself. She was late, felt the drawing was unfair because it was hurried and ultimately became the town’s scapegoat by virtue of the draw. As people move throughout life, hopefully they will remember that convenience is easy. Avoiding change and finding blame with anything is easy. It’s also just as easy to become a

On the outside, the average human being appears to be kind and friendly, but beneath that shell lies the true characteristics of man. Buried beneath that put on act there is an evil that lies within. This evil is unmasked by the qualities of pride and selfishness. No matter the being, everybody is selfish in his or her own way and concerned mostly with his or her own well-being. This can result in searching for a scapegoat when things turn bad. In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” these characteristics of the evil tendency, selfishness, and scapegoating prevail, revealing to the world the dark nature of mankind.

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" satirizes barbaric traditions in a supposedly civilized village. As the story begins, the villagers appear to be fairly civilized and carry on fairly modern lifestyles. This is assumed by the men's discussion of planting, rain, tractors, and taxes. The lottery was outdated to such a degree that some may think that the tradition is primal competition of anthropoid beasts. On the other hand, some think that carrying on the tradition was necessary. The question that must be answered is: Was this a barbaric tradition or was this ritual an honest attempt to better other villager's lives?

Anyone with knowledge of current events must be aware of times when society has seized upon a scapegoat as means of resolution. Countless politicians, military leaders, corporate executives and school administrators frequently use this proven technique.  The people of the small village were very similar to the leaders of our society.  The village people

“Every group feels strong, once it has found a scapegoat” (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913). A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for all the faults and corruptions that others have committed. In history, there are lots of scapegoat examples, the most popular being; Jesus Christ and the Jews in the Second World War. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson used persecution and tradition to demonstrate how scapegoating justified unfair killing. Both of these aspects relate to the World War that preceded only a couple years before the story was written. The persecution was blind and done once a year as a tradition that everyone expected to happen.

The narration and point of view in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” are essential components of what has made the story controversial and cause it to stay relevant since its release in 1948. The passage where the Hutchinson family is drawing papers to see which member will be stoned, on pages 234 and 235, exemplifies the power of this kind of narration perfectly. In this section, almost all of the aspects of narration and point of view are demonstrated, including the grammatical person of the narrator and their characteristics: whether they are part of the story world, their reliability, level of knowledge, and the ethical issues that arise from how the story is told.