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Simple example of symbolism in the lottery
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“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.
In the Lottery, the townspeople aren’t aware the reason behind the stoning of an individual. Tessie Hutchinson screams, “It ain’t fair, it isn’t right”(Jackson 630). She believes its unfair for her to be stoned just because its a tradition and ritual. The lottery has been going on for awhile now but the logic for its existence is still unclear to them. They don’t understand the purpose, they just perform because its a “tradition”.
The Danger of Tradition Traditionally many ancient societies would kill their people to sacrifice to God in order to obtain rain or a good harvest. These mindlessly, followed traditions were never critically thought about and therefore citizens died year after year. A similar tragedy occurs in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This story features a civilization much like our own but with one small difference, the town’s people hold a lottery every year and the town stones who ever loses to death.
In the short story “The lottery” many of the villagers showed a great emotion towards the lottery some of it is being happy or negative. For the most part, it was a more negative emotion or eery rather than villagers being happy about it. The kids though had a more pleasant emotion showing that the kids almost had no idea what was really happening. Just read this quote from the story “ Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones.” In this, quite the short story is expressing that the kids most likely do not really know what is happening and their mood at the time.
Shirley Jackson a very popular author well known for her short story called “The lottery” which always leaves the reader thinking. “The Lottery” was published on June 28, 1948 which is just weeks after it was written. Some other pieces written by Jackson are “The Haunting of Hill House”, “We have always lived in the castle” as well as “Life among the savages”. Jackson tends to write about horror and mystery and has many other pieces with supernatural themes. Many pieces written by Jackson have a small-town setting that end with horror.
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.
Although many who read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” believe it to be about a crazy town viciously slaughtering an innocent woman for the ritualized sacrifice to bring them a feastful harvest of corn, it very clearly demonstrates Jackson’s hope to educate readers of the horrors of society’s blind following using social conformity, tradition, and general acceptance. The story starts at around 10 o’clock a.m. on June 27, and children are stacking rocks. The whole town gathers around and picks one piece of paper per family, out of an old black box.
‘The Lottery’ is a story about tradition and sacrifice. However, even though the NY times article is about sacrifice, they are for different things. Such as money vs. good luck. ‘The Lottery’ talks about this small, peaceful village that have no problems and has mainly positive dialogue. But this village has this really weird tradition.
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
There seems to be a connection to cruelty and beauty in some degree. The two compliment, create, and destroy one another. Without cruelty and suffering, there could not be a beautiful and admirable existence. Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery”, suffered from mental illnesses called agoraphobia and depression (Heller, 2012). In spite of her struggles with these incurable diseases, Jackson channeled her dark thoughts into her writing; one out of 75 short stories, “The Lottery” was published in 1948 (Jackson, 1948).
What is violence? Does violence still exist? How do we get rid of this? According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, violence is the use of physical force to harm someone, to damage property, etc. it is an exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse.
Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" could have potentially been influenced by the events of the holocaust, because the people in the village blindly follow the leader despite knowing it's wrong. I feel like this story however, is more of an analogy between the people in the village and people in general. I think she was trying to say people too often follow the leader even though it's not the right thing to do.
“The Lottery” is an realism/horror story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about some villagers of a small New England town who follow the tradition of making a lottery every year. When it comes, they like to celebrate it with the correct rules and the correct objects so they can feel more comfortable. Everyone need to take a slip of paper from a small black box, and the paper with a black dot in it means that the family is the winner, then they raffle again; Bill Hutchinson, who was the husband of the protagonist Tessie Hutchinson picked a paper with a black dot in it, that meant that Tessie was the winner of the lottery, then she starts complaining because the drawing was not conducted properly. At the end, the townspeople moved off to a cleared spot outside the town and they begin stoning her to death (Jackson).
“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson is a very suspenseful, yet very shocking short story. This story is set in a small village, on a hot summers day in June. Flowers are blooming, and the towns people are gathering for the lottery, which is a tradition the town does every year. As the reader reads the first paragraph they think this is a happy story. The title also says, “The Lottery” which is a word often used for winning something or receiving a prize.
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
