“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a dramatic and suspenseful short story about a small town that has a strange ritual. The town pulls out papers out of a box, if you pull out a paper with a mark, you are stoned to death. The town is split on whether the lottery should take place or not. Instead of watching others while they are causing harm to people, take action to make sure it does not happen again. Unless the people who disagree with the lottery rebel, they might never be able to overcome this horrible circumstance.
Most people know the lottery as a contest to win money. But in the short story, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, the lottery is not a simple game competing for money. In this small village’s version of the lottery, everyone must draw out of a box, and if their family is chosen then the whole family must redraw and the death of a member is decided. After the fate is decided, the rest of the village throws stones at him or her until he or she dies. The villages reasoning of this process is they believe it guarantees a plentiful crop season.
The world is currently affected by the foulest illness of all: conformity. Many people are nervous to stray away from tradition in fear of being an outcast, even if that means following customs like racism and sexism, which causes chaos among the country. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” displays this morbid reality when a town of villagers gathers to obey their annual tradition. Although this event appears at first to be pleasant and festive, it soon becomes clear that the prize is not something of value. The “winner”, it turns out, will be stoned to death.
In Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery”, the theme is that people will follow a tradition for no reason whatsoever sometimes. I will explain why I think this is the theme in my story through 3 paragraphs. I will talk about the key details that the author (Shirley Jackson) gives throughout the story. I will then explain why all the key details connect to theme that I stated in the text. In the last paragraph I will combine my thinking into one paragraph about the beginning middle and end of the book.
This quotation meaning if the people in The Lottery noticed how unfair the lottery truly was then maybe they could change the society. Thusly, leading them to stop conforming to their old barbaric ideas. However, the people will not stop and see the unfairness of the lottery. They may drop parts of the tradition, but it will always be there in the shabby black box. Furthermore, the people enjoyed the tradition of stoning the chosen one.
Imagine a society where killing somebody for the sake of a tradition is acceptable. In the short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson describes an ordinary village with normal people, but as the story progress the details of their yearly practice known as “the lottery” unravels to be more disturbing. The author subverts the readers’ expiations by persuading the reader into assuming “the lottery” is a ordinary tradition until unusual details and the behavior of the characters come into place. In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.
People often times change when faced with a fearful situation such as the one in “The Lottery.” “The Lottery” provides a twist on the common connotation that a lottery equals money, changing the “prize” is what makes this story different. Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” uses the Community as a symbol to convey an underlying message; when fear is present, people begin to change, positively and negatively. During the story, the reader observes a behavior that Jackson left in the story. Jackson writes about a character faced with a situation that makes him nervous, then the community acts a certain way during this scene.
“The lottery” (1948) Analysis The short story, “The lottery” by Shirley Jackson takes place in a small village. Was conducted the lottery story in 1948. In this story, the lottery is a yearly tradition that takes place in a small American Town.
The tradition of the lottery has been carried out for so long in this village that nobody even knows the reason for its occurring in the first place and nobody questions it. When Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village, is told about other villages giving up the tradition of the lottery, he says that they are, “[A] pack of crazy fools [...]. There [has] always been a lottery [...]” (Jackson, 4). There is no reason why there has always been a lottery except that every year on June 27th, they held the lottery.
Conformity is a powerful and influential behavior that can drastically affect a society’s circumstances. The morality and wellbeing of the individuals’ in a society are shaped by the everyday traditions and customs of that culture. Shirley Jackson, an award-winning author for her works in horror and mystery, unveils the perturbing effect of conformity on a society and its people in her short story “The Lottery.” In her thought-provoking story, a village situated in a warm area of England prepares to partake in a traditional crop fertility ritual that involves a paper drawing to elect a ‘winner’ who will be stoned to death. The societal conformity to continue this brutal tradition causes the life of a person to be insensitively taken away each
I was able to understand five Major claims Teresa made throughout her article. The first one is that the popular, the disturbing, and the hauntings of history infiltrate American literature. For example, America does not have enough history to actually represent the gothic concept. The Gothic genre has the ability to seep into other genres and can appear in categories like romanticism. Gothic moments can thus occur in all areas of American literature, from fables to narratives.
Human nature can be characterized as being positive, capable of altruism and goodness which sets humankind apart from savage animals; however, human nature possesses a dark side, namely cruelty, and it is capable of barbarism like any beast. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, cruelty is part of human nature, and the participants of the lottery demonstrate human cruelty through violence towards one another; markedly, by exhibiting desensitization to violence and the acceptance of violence resulting in internal dysfunction which is perpetuated yearly. Participants of the lottery belong to a close-knit community, and every year the community hosts an enigmatic lottery draw. The conclusion of the lottery draw is only mysterious until the outcome
The Lottery itself represents a primal example of loss of innocence; portrayed through the young boys who gather at the town square to collect rocks for the horrors soon to follow. An illustration of how traditions can lose their true meanings and come to represent violence and warfare. Furthermore, “The Lottery” also represents the decaying characteristics of traditions, as symbolized by the town’s black box, in this case where every year, someone’s name is drawn out of the black box and they are stoned to death, by other members who may or may not end up to be family. Nonetheless, it ends up to be the villagers who
Throughout centuries, traditions and rituals have had the ability to control one’s behavior. In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, she tells the reader of a small village. On the surface, this community may seem relatively normal. However, despite the picturesque appeal, this falsely serene village has a distinct deceitful flaw. On June 27th, every year, a lottery takes place.
Many people would die to win the lottery; in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you would do anything NOT to win this lottery. This annual lottery reveals the negative aspects of this town’s Tradition, Savagery, Barbarism, and cold-heartedness. In this paper I will show why this town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because of the accepting wickedness that can be shown. Why does the town follow this foolish tradition? Throughout “The Lottery” the narrator tells that the people do not remember how the lottery began, and that some of the older people believe the lottery has changed over the years, that now people just want to get it over with as fast as possible.
