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Literary Techniques Used In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Envision that your favorite tradition has been completely changed, and the most memorable part is removed. Now, it’s been completely twisted and taken out of context. This short story takes place in a normal town, with an annual tradition, The Lottery. Someone would think a lottery would be a worthy tradition, but by the end, readers learn the lottery is actually extremely grim and unfortunate. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson builds suspense to portray the theme of people needing to be aware of the dangers and impacts of blindly following traditions through characters, setting, and allusion.
Shirley Jackson uses characterization to build suspense to prove how blindly following traditions can result in many dangers and impacts. It was past …show more content…

Before the lottery had begun, the boys had gathered a lot of stones in the corner of the town square. At the time, readers had no clue that the stones would be a part of the tradition. However, once the first part of the lottery was completed, readers realized the lottery is a negative tradition because “Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Hurry up’”(74). The preparation of the setting took place before 10 in the morning and now “there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box” (74). As the stoning started to begin, the environment was filled with villagers picking up rocks and preparing. Also, the villagers were very tense and rapidly trying to get the lottery over with. The setting builds suspense because of how violent it was becoming so quickly and readers are astonished to discover that stoning was what the “winner” received. This setting points out how blinded the villagers were because they went straight to picking up stones without even wondering why the stoning was done. Jackson was able to successfully create a dangerous situation and increase suspense to prove that some traditions can have harmful outcomes that go

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