Passages from the text pg.#s Commentary
“Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” pg.1 1. (T, P) The villagers are suborned and are insisted on doing something that is not right. You could also see how threatening the idea of change for them. This shows how traditions could be dangerous when people abuse it and follow it blindly. Shirley Jackson’s purpose of writing this story is that the danger of unseeingly following tradition.
“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green. pg.1 2. (SMI) A small village in the summer,
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Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities.” pg.1 3. (POV) This is in third person point of view allows the readers to visualize what is happening. The character is present and knows about everything, but give out no opinion, emotion, nor personal dislike or like towards the situation.
“Mr. Summers said soberly, “‘guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work. pg.2 4. (Con) The conflict as shown by this quote is external. The townspeople know that the lottery is wrong. They have to decide doing something for the tradition outweighs the pain it will cause to that one person and many more to come. People in this village do not know what is wrong from what is right because that is the way it’s always been and it the tradition that caused the death to Tessie Hutchinson.
“Thought we were going to have to get it on without you, Tessie.” Mrs. Hutchinson said grinning, “Wouldn’t pg.2 5. (CP) Tessie Hutchinson cheerfully shows up to the lottery proceedings late. This shows that later in the story something is going to happen to her. As the lottery drawing reveals Tessie as the unlucky receiver of the black spot. She eventually becomes invisible to them in passion of persecution even though she did not do anything
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“It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.” pg.7 10. (R) Tessie keeps stating that the lottery is unfair and the townspeople gather around her and start throwing stone at her. What’s harsh about this is that even her loving husband is involved in her death.
“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” pg.7 11. (LM) He wrote in the time when World War II had just ended. It means that people who seem normal will do really dreadful things if those things seems common to them. It is specially related to the Holocaust because during the Holocaust normal Germans help kill all of those people, because that’s the only thing they knew about and the society seemed to think it’s normal to do that.
Shirley Jackson was born December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, CA and died on August 8, 1965 in North Bennington, VT. She wrote her dark story “The Lottery” while she was living on Prospect Street in North Bennington, Vermont. It describes the common ritual in a tidy Yankee village that is quiet similar to the one she lived