Irony And Metaphors In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

One of the most well known works of Shirley Jackson's is The Lottery. This short story is based off of what seems like an ordinary village. The title “The Lottery” comes from a lottery that takes place every spring and occurs in the story. What most people think of as something positive, Jackson makes into a terrible event. Shirley Jackson’s writing technique in “The Lottery” is very unique due to the use of irony and metaphors to leave the reader shocked.

Jackson’s uses irony and metaphors to swindle the reader into thinking the winner of the lottery wins something positive. “In ‘The Lottery,’ for example, the reader is first lulled into an appreciation of the beautiful June 27th morning, when the 300 people of the village are gathering stones,

Jackson schemes the reader into a reality ending when in contrary a shocking ending comes. “Suddenly, in the midst of this ordinary, matter-of-fact environment, there occurs a terrifyingly cruel action, official, accepted, yet for the reader mysterious and unexplained” (Heilman 222). This cruel action, the stoning of the winner, totally catches the reader off guard and in a vulnerable position. The reader just expects an ordinary ending where the winner would win some kind of prize. “To put in other terms, the symbolic intention of the story could have been made clear earlier so that throughout the story we would have been seeking the symbolic level instead of being driven to look for it only retrospectively, after it has suddenly become apparent that a realistic ending will not work” (Heilman 222). From the quote above, it says that if the reader would have read the story with the intentions of something unexpected to occur than the shock would be less prevented. Nevertheless, the reader is still going to be shocked because of such a non-realistic ending. “They stood there away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The womens faded dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk” (Jackson 10). This would be a good clue to look at because it shows the villagers acting