ipl-logo

Mr. Jackson In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

457 Words2 Pages
On June 27th, 1948, started with the root of all evil, money… but not only, in the story, “The Lottery” shows two sides of humanity and the overall concept of the characters Mr. Summers and Mrs. Hutchinson. People may think that the lottery is about winning money, but instead it was about getting stoned to death by your so called friends and family. Surprise! The lottery isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Mr. Summers is a good guy. He's a very well groomed person, who had the time and energy to do many things for the town. For example, he helps run the lottery, a square dance, a teen club, and a Halloween program. Mr. Summers not only helped run the lottery, he ran the coal business making tons of money. He doesn't have children but a scold
Show More
Related
615 Words | 3 Pages

Most people know the lottery as a contest to win money. But in the short story, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, the lottery is not a simple game competing for money. In this small village’s version of the lottery, everyone must draw out of a box, and if their family is chosen then the whole family must redraw and the death of a member is decided. After the fate is decided, the rest of the village throws stones at him or her until he or she dies. The villages reasoning of this process is they believe it guarantees a plentiful crop season.

Read More
1146 Words | 5 Pages

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, is a short story expressed through the theme of apathy, when the community feels no emotion for anyone, that a ritual is more important than a human being, mob mentality, and hypocrisy which is prevalent within the townspeople. It may help learning more about Shirley Jackson to better understand why she wrote such a horrific story like, “The Lottery.” Shirley Jackson moved into a small town, Bennington, Vermont, where she wasn’t accepted within her town which shows she was thinking how cruel people can be. Not being accepted is not the same as being stoned or killed, but it has the capacity for cruelty. Through this, Shirley Jackson is suggesting that we need to examine ourselves and our actions carefully and live our lives consciously instead of

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

Gerard Lyons February 9, 2017 Ms.Snyder English II The Lottery Analysis “The Lottery” is a short story like none other. The precise details the author describes in the beginning of “The Lottery” set us up for the shocking conclusion. In the first paragraph, Jackson provides details about the day on which the lottery takes place. The author references the exact date as June 27th and it was in the morning time. She then goes on to describe the environment of the story.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

The Lottery by Shirly Jackson, is not a hopeful story of luck and fortune as the title might suggest. Instead it is a story of death and tradition. The short story describes how tradition can be dangerous, and when it is followed blindly it can hurt many people. Nothing shows the dangers of tradition, and its exclusivity as well as the characters devotion to the black box.

Read More
988 Words | 4 Pages

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson, a popular writer in the twentieth century who is widely acclaimed for her stories and novels of the supernatural. Jackson was born on December 14, 1919 in San Francisco, California. She wanted to be a writer from an early age and while she grew up, she kept a journal of her writings that revealed her curiosity in the supernatural and superstition. Later on in her life, her family moves from California to New York where in 1935 she starts her college life at the University of Rochester. She then decided to withdraw for a year to teach herself how to write.

Read More
785 Words | 4 Pages

‘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.

Read More
1255 Words | 6 Pages

The Lottery,is a short fictional story published in 1948 and written Shirley Jackson in the magazine called, The New Yorker. Some of the main characters of this story are, the Hutchinsons,Mrs. Delacroix,Old Man Warner,Mr. Summers,Mr. Martin,Mr. Graves, and Mrs. Dunbar. The Lottery is about this village that has a very strong tradition where somebody has to sacrifice for the crop, but some younger adults don’t like the tradition and want to give it up. ” Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,” was the old saying. The head of the household/husband has to draw a piece of paper out of this black box.

Read More
1274 Words | 6 Pages

That is where the similarities to any other real-life lottery ends. The ‘winner’, if you could call them that, gets stoned by the entire town. When someone points out that some other towns are stopping their lottery, Old Man Warner exclaims “Pack of crazy fools… Listening to the young folks, nothing 's good enough for them… There 's always been a lottery” (Jackson 27).

Read More
897 Words | 4 Pages

The people of a small town gather in the town square on June 27 for the town’s lottery. The story states that the lottery takes longer in other towns, but because there are only 300 people in this village, it only takes two hours. The children, who have just finished school for the summer, run around gathering stones. The children make a pile with the stones in the town square while keeping some in their pockets. While one might think, this story ends with someone winning money from the lottery, but it ends with the winner getting stones thrown at.

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
1009 Words | 5 Pages

“The Lottery" is a verdict of depraved tradition of a community. The story surrounds a town where the lottery is drawn every year as a sacrifice ritual one 's life for a good fertile crop. The lottery rose up public opinions when it first published in 1948. It is a piece of Shirley Jackson in which she wrote about inhumanity and violence among human based on her real experience when she moved to a small town and was rejected by its people. Shirley Jackson always believed in sinful spirit within each individual self as her writing style portrayed the vicious side of her and people 's souls, “The dark current of awareness of evil that runs through her life and work seems too strong to have as its sole root the observance of suburban hypocrisy” (Judy Oppenhaimer).

Read More
1281 Words | 6 Pages

Traditions: Relevance Unclear to Their Purpose Since the turn of the century and the creation of new innovations in technology, families across the world have seen the ownership of televisions and other electronics as signs of success. CBS News writer, Greg Anrig comments on the usage of technology--specifically televisions--in the American home, as they have practically taken over the role of a babysitter in the common American household (Anrig). As the usage of the television has increased in the home more research has been conducted on the effects it has on children. Michael Lasalandra of The Boston Herald explained the effect TV has on children’s health, “families that usually eat meals while watching TV eat fewer fruits and vegetables and more junk food than those who dine with the set turned off” (Lasalandra).

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
467 Words | 2 Pages

The tradition of the lottery has been carried out for so long in this village that nobody even knows the reason for its occurring in the first place and nobody questions it. When Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village, is told about other villages giving up the tradition of the lottery, he says that they are, “[A] pack of crazy fools [...]. There [has] always been a lottery [...]” (Jackson, 4). There is no reason why there has always been a lottery except that every year on June 27th, they held the lottery.

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

More about Mr. Jackson In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Related Topics

Open Document