Analyzing Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Analyzing Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

Introduction

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is perhaps one of the most well-known American short stories. While this short story is extremely well known in American literature, there is very little reviews because of the troubling nature of the story. Frequently, a part of literature classes, this short story created a considerable stir when it was first published. Jackson received hate mail for portraying such a society and even letters asking her about the existence of such a society (Franklin). This is indeed a very poignant response that showed how effective Jackson’s writing was. “The Lottery” is after all a story about how a village and other villages surrounding it take exhibitionist pleasure

It can be said that “The Lottery,” is, in many ways, an anthropological fiction that is based on the criticism of some of the baser aspects of human societies also discussed the evil inherent in human nature. That is why "the lottery" is impressive and famous in the history of American literature. And also, Shirley Jackson with its "beyond the times" and has a "contemporary resonance" theme, as a very important writer in history of America. The success of this novel is that the author did not use the major social themes, but in peacetime with universal significance of the incident, opened a ruthless fact: all the source of evil is not in a system or form, but in human nature. As long as, there is selfishness and greed in human nature, human atrocities cannot be stopped. "The lottery" is the comparison of the meaning of democracy and humanity. It

In the story, we hear the conversation between Adams and Old Man Warner, which shows that this is a ritual that has been in practice for a long time, and people do not have a choice of escaping it. We can also see the human nature is very complicated in here. The villagers know of only this world in which the tradition of stoning must be carried out. In fact, their world can even be compared to a world where dangerous, unknown diseases thrive or where the state is constantly at war, thus making death a far more common and acceptable aspect of life then we can imagine. The lack of humanity and compassion in these people is then a defense mechanism, which has made them capable of surviving the traumatic experience that is death. In her analysis of “The Lottery,” Friedman sees the practice as a reference to inhuman practices in rural communities around the world that can be often insular but are considered simple and beautiful in popular culture and imagination. Friedman referred to the practice as a fertility rite in a clear attempt to assuage the many that responded harshly to Jackson’s tory when it was first published. Indeed, if death by stoning were a fertility practice, one cannot judge the villagers for their practice. Friedman’s intention was to show that because it was a rite, the villagers were not