ipl-logo

How Does Shirley Jackson Use Foreshadowing In The Lottery

678 Words3 Pages

In Shirley Jackson’s 1949 short story “The Lottery,” takes place on a beautiful June summer day in a fictional location with a universal setting. The town is small, and the lottery does not take very long due to the size of the town. The town people attend the lottery once a year in the square of the village. Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing in the short story “The Lottery,” by painting a beautiful picture of utopia, and building suspense and horror to keep the reader anxious to find out what is won in the lottery.
In the beginning of the story the setting is perfect. The children gathered first, playing and collecting different size stones and rocks, and placing them in a large pile. “Eventually [they] made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded …show more content…

The paper is forced out of Tess Hutchinson’s hand. “It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal-company office” (Jackson (395). Tess is the winner, which is going to be stoned to death by her village, and even her son is given stones to throw at her. “The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (Jackson, 396). The village people were eager and ready to finish the lottery. “Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (Jackson, 396). The shocking lottery came to an end with the loss of a life.
Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing in the short story “The Lottery,” by painting a beautiful picture of utopia, and building suspense and horror to keep the reader anxious to find out what is won in the lottery. Shirley Jackson gives the reader hints throughout the story that come together at the end. Most often lottery is recognized as a winning, and not often is the winner truly the unlucky one. The Author wants the reader to understand that things are not always as they seem. Shirley Jackson leaves the reader in suspense and

Show More
Related
2309 Words | 10 Pages

Annotated Bibliography 1. Jackson The Lottery By: Yarmove, Jay A. Explicator. Summer94, Vol. 52 Issue 4, p242. 4p.

Read More
322 Words | 2 Pages

Usually there’s a winner in a lottery, but not in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This story intrigued me by it's suspenseful nature and it's chaotic events. In small town America, they come together once a year to perform an annual tradition. Mrs. Jackson demonstrates literary devices such as foreshadowing, mood, and conflict in “The Lottery”. Foreshadowing is used quite a few times in “The Lottery”.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

“The Lottery” Interpretive Essay “The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts of with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers, the official, holds the lottery. After that, every family draws out of an old black box, and a certain family gets picked. Out of the certain family, one person gets picked as the unlucky “winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery.

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

In 1948, when the New Yorker published Shirley Jacksons piece, “The Lottery,” it sparked outrage among readers, but could arguably be known as one of her most famous pieces of writing. In this short story, Shirley Jackson used literally elements such as imagery, diction, and symbolism to foreshadow the negative and harsh ending of the story; the harsh ending that sparked such outrage by society in the 1940’s. One of the main ways Jackson foreshadows the ending and true meaning of her short story, “The Lottery,” is through symbolism. Jackson uses the color black throughout the story.

Read More
227 Words | 1 Pages

The short story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, the plot in the story that it only gives people an account of drawing lots to determine the winner who shall be stoned to death for harvest. However, we get a deep impression of the characters and their fate after reading the story. Jackson indicated a prevalent theme, the indirect of characterization and using symbolism and irony to modify this horror story. The Allegorical story of “ The Lottery” is often regarded as a satire of human behavior and social institutions, and exemplifies some of the central themes of Jackson’s fiction, including the victimization of the individual by society, the tendency of people to be cruel, and the presence of evil in everyday life.

Read More
1191 Words | 5 Pages

The short story “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson. This story takes place in a small village where everybody knows each other. In this story all the villagers gather around town for their annual lottery. Everyone in the village is compelled to follow this tradition even if the outcome ends up with someone dying. In “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses conflict, theme, and irony to develop this suspenseful short story.

Read More
584 Words | 3 Pages

The Lottery is one of Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece. She was born in California, graduated from Syracuse University in New York and was successful in writing novels, short stories, children’s fiction and biographies. In this short story, Jackson showed uncommon and absurd events in common settings that when it was published, many of the readers asked her questions as to how the conclusion was interpreted. In this analysis, Formalistic approach is the approach used.

Read More
1474 Words | 6 Pages

“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).

Read More
1033 Words | 5 Pages

“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.

Read More
550 Words | 3 Pages

3/8/2017 The lottery essay Anan Istetieh Anticipation mingled with uncertainty, better known, as suspense, is an inevitable quality of human nature. Suspense is occasionally a great mechanism. It allows the author to keep the readers alert and leads up to the element of surprise, which is a successful writing tool that makes a story more enjoyable. The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson builds up suspense through the foreshadowing of a horrible moment, creating a character that stands out from the crowd all while withholding the true nature of the story. The author of “The Lottery” foreshadowed the horrible climax of the story by explaining how the children were recently released from school for the summer, but they felt discomfort, “and

Read More
871 Words | 4 Pages

While real life traditions are rarely so extreme, Jackson’s exaggerated fictional example emphasizes her point to great effect. By the end of the story, the audience is convinced that the town is wrong to uphold the lottery tradition, but Jackson is not really writing about a lottery; she is writing about how damaging it can

Read More
569 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
1333 Words | 6 Pages

“The Lottery” is a portentous work of fiction than transcends its

Read More
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.

Read More
596 Words | 3 Pages

It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd” (7). It must have been painful and hard for Bill to take the paper from Tessie knowing the she was the winner of the Lottery. But Bill was just going along with everyone else and the reader develops pity for his lack of

Read More

More about How Does Shirley Jackson Use Foreshadowing In The Lottery

Related Topics

Open Document