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Analysis Of The Lottery: Who Is Responsible For Tessie's Death

684 Words3 Pages

Imagine the love of your life, a random old man, and the whole town is responsible for your death. That is exactly what occurred with the main protagonist in the novel Lottery. The Lottery is a short novel, written by Shirley Jackson published on June 26, 1948. The story paints a fictional town with an annual ritual known as the lottery. The lottery requests the head of the household to draw slips. If selected, the second round was for individual family members to draw. The person picked is stoned to death to ensure a good harvest. Those who are responsible for Tessie’s death are her husband Bill, the town’s elder Old Man Warner, and the town’s society as a whole.
One person responsible for Tessie’s death is her static husband Bill Hutchinson. Bill Hutchinson is accountable for the death of his wife, due to the fact that he could have saved her. During the lottery, the Hutchinson family was selected and one member of the …show more content…

Old Man Warner is responsible for Tessie’s death because he is an elder with a large influence on the town, but does not speak up. the idea of the lottery in his view is not a bad thing. While conversing with Mr. Adam, Old Man Warner called the people in the north “Pack of crazy fools” when Mr.Adam told him that the people in the north are considering to give up the lottery. In another event, Old man Warner tells the town “Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery… Seventy-seventh time.” The main idea of the entire quote of old man Warner is to know that he has been in the process a long time, and the blame has fallen on him because he has not once in his seventy-seven time in the lottery spoke out about the process being inhumanly cruel, or evil. Old man Warner is an elder, and the elder of a town are mostly respected for their wisdom. Old man Warner has a humongous effect on the town, and him simply speaking up will cause the town to

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As Old Man Warner went through the crowd, he said, “Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery, seventy-seventh time” (Jackson 5). As a matter of fact, he is the oldest person in the town who really values the lottery. He follows it, as the generations before him used to do. According to his actions he is not afraid of the consequences that may happen in the future. As it has always been practiced in the society, without really questioning its actual meaning on why they are doing it.

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However, they both felt they where right in the stands they took , which changed the way they viewed the world. In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, their was a village that had a tradition of killing the person who won The Lottery. Tessie Hutchinson was how ever the person who won and that means she would be stoned to death by the people in her village. In the text “A stone hit her on the head”.

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The entire town follows his lead, blindly ignorant to the murder they are committing each year. The lottery, and the people in the town who go along with it, harms not only the victim but the children of the victim. The children will now have no mother and will have memories of when they essentially murdered their own mother. Blind ignorance has a huge effect on young people “The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.” Davy is the victim’s youngest son who, when they went through the second part of the lottery, was not even old enough to hold his own ballot.

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Hutchinson, the “winner” of the lottery. It is quite coincidental that the person that showed up late to the lottery because she didn’t remember what day it was, ended up being the one who was stoned. When she shows up late, everybody laughs at her and makes jokes (Jackson 294-295). It seems like they have it out for her just because she showed up late. Perhaps she did not get along with the town very well to begin with.

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“The Lottery" is a verdict of depraved tradition of a community. The story surrounds a town where the lottery is drawn every year as a sacrifice ritual one 's life for a good fertile crop. The lottery rose up public opinions when it first published in 1948. It is a piece of Shirley Jackson in which she wrote about inhumanity and violence among human based on her real experience when she moved to a small town and was rejected by its people. Shirley Jackson always believed in sinful spirit within each individual self as her writing style portrayed the vicious side of her and people 's souls, “The dark current of awareness of evil that runs through her life and work seems too strong to have as its sole root the observance of suburban hypocrisy” (Judy Oppenhaimer).

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This character, Tessie Hutchinson, also hides in the conformity in the beginning, even making humoredly comments such as, “Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now, would you,” as it’s followed by the laughter of other villagers (292). When she arrives for the lottery, she exchanges words with one of her acquaintances, Mrs. Delacroix, which also plays a key role in the theme later. After a long anticipation, the winner of the lottery is chosen, being Hutchinson. Her attitude quickly changes, exclaiming that it wasn’t fair, as the rest of the village closes in on her for the stoning. Even Delacroix selects a stone so big, she must hold it with two

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Another quote to suggest the crowd grew nervous was when Mr. Adams was called upon, “They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously”. She described what the characters were doing and not what their thoughts or intentions were. Shirley Jackson intensified the feeling when Tessie hysterically protested Bill’s “winning” selection, by withholding information until the last possible second, she builds the story’s suspense and creates a shocking, powerful conclusion. In conclusion, The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson builds up suspense by foreshadowing the horrible moment through the children who felt uneasy and collected rocks, creating a character that stands out from the crowd, Tessie Hutchinson, the person who saved her husband but could not save herself. More importantly, withholding the true nature of the story until the end, leading to the tragic death of Tessie

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When the twelve year old Nancy “[goes] forward switching her skirt, [taking] a slip daintily from the box,” the audience is struck by her innocence, making the subsequent death of her mother via the lottery outcome even more terrible and tragic. A still more effective example of Jackson’s appeals to pathos occurs at the end of the story, where “someone [gives] little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” to join the crowd in stoning his mother. This moment is incredibly poignant and elevates the disgust and pity that the audience feels as the nature of the lottery is revealed. Little Davy is too young understand what is happening, and it is reasonable to assume that the rest of the characters have long since lost touch with the purpose of the lottery, as the only explanation the audience is given for its continuation is Warner’s statement that “there’s always been a lottery.” This remarkably insufficient excuse in support of such a heinous crime secures the sympathy of the audience towards not only Tessie’s plight but also Jackson’s argument.

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Coldly seizing the paper to reveal that she possessed the marked ticket indicates a lack of empathy, not of a friend and a spouse, but as a participant removed from any loyalty to family, instead loyal to the lottery tradition. By holding the slip of paper Mrs. Hutchinson had drawn, Mr. Hutchinson seals his wife’s fate knowing full well what will come next. Mr. Hutchinson had made the choice to essentially betray his

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The town doesn’t care who was picked they just want death to the person and everybody involved can take part. Old man Wagoner could believe that the lottery helps with crops. But for everybody else they just do it out of blindness and evilness. This town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because the lottery is so ingrained in their culture that they cannot let go of it, and they don’t view killing an innocent neighbor as wrong but just “another clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer

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Old Man Warner conveys the idea that the lottery is essential for the villages progress. Accordingly, this statement speaks to the importance of a useless and harmful practice in the minds of the villagers. The murderous tradition of the lottery is a normality for all the villagers, especially the children and displays their blind acceptance of an idle practice. When the winner of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson, is revealed, “ The children already [have] stones. And [...]

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650 Words | 3 Pages

“The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts off with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers holds the lottery. Once everyone gathers, every family draws a slip of paper out of an old black box, and the family with the black mark on their paper gets picked. After that, each family member older than 3 years of age re-draws a slip of paper again and this time, the person with the black mark on their paper gets picked as the “lucky winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery, with her reward is being stoned to death.

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She realizes that this is an unpleasurable and outdated tradition and should be forgotten only because she got chosen. However, if her family’s name wasn’t drawn, she would have blindly followed the ritual, thrilled to have escaped a gruesome, sacrificial death. As a reader it is easy to empathize for Tessie since she or others don’t have a voice in their community or are even able to look at the bigger picture and see that the lottery is unnecessary. Not only does the dramatic irony of the lottery allow the reader to understand Tessie’s view, it creates a similar feeling towards Bill Hutchinson. For example, “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand.

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To start off, a brief history of the lottery is presented to the reader, which quickly implants the idea that the Lottery is an annual event that has occurred for centuries within the village and surrounding area undisturbed. One example of this is the statement regarding how the original equipment for performing the Lottery was lost decades prior to the oldest villager's birth, thus implying a history that dates back over a hundred years. In addition, Old Man Warner states to Mr. Adams “There's always been a lottery.” These two examples establish the idea that the Lottery has been carried out for centuries in the village unchallenged.

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The villagers are reluctant to give up their beliefs because they think that they might lose their distinction that separates them from others. Old Man Warner strongly disapproves of people who want to quit the lottery. He says, “There’s always been a lottery”3 so for him, these people are “crazy.”4 However, for the readers, his reluctance means that he is afraid to change his place within the society. He has gained the title of Old Man not only because he is the oldest man in the village but he has also been in the lottery for 77 years.

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