“the Destructors” and “the Lottery” Fiction Essay

We will try to dig first on the connection of Shirley Jackson to her writing “The Lottery”. Shirley Jackson was born in 1916 in San Francisco, California. One of her masterpieces was "The Lottery," the most argumentative piece and well known story about a village that occurs in once year death practice. The New Yorker published the short story of Jackson at the year 1948, "The Lottery."

Shirley Jackson is often regarded as one of the most brilliant authors of the twentieth century. Born in San Francisco in 1916, she spent the majority of her adolescence writing short stories and poetry (Allen). While she is known best for her supernatural stories, one of her most popular works is a short story called “The Lottery”. The lottery takes place in a small village in which once a year on June 24th, the town population is gathered. After the gathering, there is a drawing to see which family is chosen, after the family is chosen, another drawing takes place to see who is stoned to death. In the New Yorker's magazine book review hailed “The Lottery” as “one of the most haunting and shocking short stories of modern America and is one of the most frequently anthologized” (Jackson). This review stems heavily from Jackson’s brilliant use of irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing. However, perhaps what truly stands out is how Jackson is able to wrap all of those elements together as a way to show an overarching theme of the corruption that exists in human nature. While the real source of “The Lottery’s” inspiration is unclear, there has been heavy speculation that the roots lie heavily in the actions of the holocaust and the actions that took place during World War II. Regardless of the source material, a general consensus can be made that the plot of the lottery is a dark reflection of human actions.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson was written in 1948. The story takes place in a village square of a town on June 27th. The author does not use much emotion in the writing to show how the barbaric act that is going on is look at as normal. This story is about a town that has a lottery once a year to choose who should be sacrificed, so that the town will have a plentiful year for growing crops. Jackson has many messages about human nature in this short story. The most important message she conveys is how cruel and violent people can be to one another. Another very significant message she conveys is how custom and tradition can hold great power over people. Jackson also conveys the message of

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

As the plot of the stories unfolds, the greater influence of violent tensions become evident. In The Lottery, people follow the tradition despite its cruelty and absurdity. Although the ritual of the lottery is brutal, the dwellers of the village do not seem to see how barbaric it is because “there’s always been a lottery” (Jackson, 1982, p. 118). Nevertheless, the tensions grow when the lottery begin and every citizen is awaiting for its end. The climatic moment of the story grows when the reader discovers that Tess

In “The Lottery”, Jackson foreshadows the ending and tricks us into thinking that the town is normal in many ways. Initially, Jackson foreshadows the ending of the story with Mr. Graves’ name. The word grave refers to a place where someone is buried, hinting at the ending of the story where the reader can infer that someone dies. Additionally, Mrs. Hutchinson coming late foreshadows that she is going to be the “winner” of the lottery. She is singled out further by Mr. Hutchinson telling her, “Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie”, which foreshadows her being important in the lottery.

Once upon a time there was a little village. In this village three hundred people happily farmed and played and went about their business. The children went to school while the men cut wood or farmed, and the women cooked and cleaned. Every summer in June each of villagers took part in the traditional lottery drawing and one villager was picked for the prize – a stoning. In 1948, Shirley Jackson published this short story known as “The Lottery,” in The New York Times. The story’s plot shocked readers all over America as they learned of the horror happening in such a quaint town. Jackson purposely set this tragic event in this innocent setting to emphasize humanity’s cruelty. Using her appalling short story, The Lottery,

Shirley Jackson 's short story "The Lottery" and Kurt Vonnegut 's short story "Harrison Bergeron" do share a similitude in subject, especially as far as scrutinizing the Status Quo, and the resilience of counterproductive social practices for compliance. There is likewise a comparability in that both stories show two extremely homogeneous social orders that mean to keep up their solidarity through basic practices that lead more to bring about apprehension than to lead towards change. Moreover, during the time spent keeping up these conventions, both social orders stay stagnant. These stories are comparable from multiple points of view however they additionally have numerous distinctions; "The Lottery" appears to happen in a more established New England town in 1948 when the general population were more savage than they are currently though "Harrison Bergeron" happens later on, in the year 2081 some place in center America. In both stories, the primary character, or what is by all accounts the fundamental character, gets rebuffed for addressing or resisting the lifestyle in the place where they grew up and both bite the dust while a family member(s) watch them. In Shirley Jackson 's "The Lottery", the general population live in a little town in New England and consistently, a lottery is facilitated with the whole town 's kin assembled in one range which is just around 300 individuals. The night prior to the lottery, everybody 's name is put on a rundown with the goal that

“All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right and not what is established” said Aristotle. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” she explores this power idea of the mob mentality and how it creates pointless violence. The story takes place in a small ordinary village, but every year everyone in the town gathers to have the lottery. The lottery is a ritualistic murder of an innocent person in the town, even the women and children must take part. After the lottery is over the town goes back to normal, as if the lottery never happened. Jackson uses the mob mentality to show the readers the pointless violence in our lives.

Shirley Jackson?s insights and observations about society are reflected in her shocking and disturbing short story The Lottery. Jackson reveals two general attitudes in this story: first is the shocking tendency for societies to select a scapegoat and second is the idea that communities are victims of social tradition and rituals.

Since the early 1900s, “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, is a haunting tale of ritualistic murder, intertwined with tradition and fear. Within this story, there are several themes to be found, such the effects of being a scapegoat, gender and family roles, and ultimately human nature. In this specific case, the short story introduces the themes of tradition. “The Lottery” asserts that the negatives of tradition can be dangerous, if followed blindly in a society that refuses to progress due to conformity, mob mentality, and a subtle, selfish enjoyment of violence.

The Lottery is an incredible short story that captures the audiences’ attention before suddenly transforming into a tale of horrific violence. In the story, Shirley Jackson tells the story of a village’s participation in an annual lottery. As it turns, out, the lottery culminates into the stoning of one member in a ritual that is obediently observed every summer on the twenty sixth day of June. Similar rites were performed in Ancient Greece for cleansing the cities (Frazer, 2002). However, American towns do not engage in such annual rites. Nevertheless, there is evidence of organized, sanctioned forms of violence similar to the ones depicted by the author. This paper demonstrates that The Lottery is an exceptional depiction of truths and realities about an America, which is increasingly plagued by gun violence.

These twos stories take place in completely different places “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson takes place in June in a small rural New England village; whereas “The Destructors” by Graham Greene takes place in August in an urban neighborhood in London, England after World War I. Both of these authors were very descriptive when introducing the audience to the scene. In the first sentence of “The Lottery”, we have a very vivid description of the local area. “ The morning of 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. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock;” (Jackson). When reading that the reader thinks that everything is okay; it’s a beautiful day seems like the opening to a Disney movie, but the Irony is that it is not and that this is going to be a really bad day.

The Lottery, having written after the World War II, points out the capacity of man for cruelty and violence necessary for survival. Critics said that the World War II opened the eyes of people to a new extent of violence. Jackson, in this short story, gives an example of what men can do in order to survive, despite their morals and beliefs.

However, Brooks and Warren suggest that Jackson’s purpose for the short story “The Lottery” was to connect to the reader by creating the setting very similar to present day. Brooks and Warren get a realistic impression of the village, and can relate to the characters, which is what gives the reader a sense of “grim terror (Books, Warren)” at the end of the story. The fact that the readers can relate to the cheerful setting of the sunny day in June “provides a special shaping of the reader’s attitude toward the climactic event and toward that from which the climactic event stems (Brooks, Warren).” The intense shock the reader receives at the end of the story had to be carefully prepared by Jackson. The relation between the reader, the setting, and the characters was to make her story believable, almost as to make the reader question if her story was actually fiction. Because Jackson had taken the time to prepare the reader for such an ending was perhaps to relate to “live issues and issues relevant to our time (Brooks, Warren) ” might have been the whole point of Jackon’s short