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Participate In The Heinous Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” the townspeople participate in the heinous tradition, the lottery, to gain social belonging within the group with no regard to the death that ensues. With Tessie’s immediate reaction to her family and herself being chosen by the lottery, it seems obvious that she had these opinions beforehand but was not willing to speak out. There are a few different reasons as to why Tessie could not voice her opinion. One could speculate that many if not all of the townspeople also have the underlying opinion that the lottery is no longer useful. The town is so willing to kill whoever the lottery chooses, so why wouldn’t they agree to killing anyone who deviates from the group’s decisions. The townspeople are unable to voice their opinion, because they fear what the rest of the town may do to them. As a result of this fear, the town learned to disregard the act of murder. If someone wishes to live, he or she must …show more content…

There is no authoritative leader, and they do not attempt to bring others into their own belief system; however, the townspeople strongly disapprove of voicing an opposite opinion and will respond accordingly. Having a different opinion in this town could possibly- or not- result in the death of the divergent. Because of this unknown, the townspeople, except Tessie, keep their opinions to themselves; they do not want to be stoned like the person drawn from the lottery. In addition to the fear of capital punishment, the deadly ritual is said to bring a good harvest. This kind of superstition is congruent with that within a cult. Though there is no definite strong leader, Old Man Warner has a lot of control over the town as the oldest man; he is very openly for the lottery and will indust whoever disagrees with him. With his status in the town, there is one more reason for townspeople to keep their opinions to themselves especially while around Old Man

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Explication of “The Lottery” In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” in the final paragraphs the character Tessie is the winner of the lottery which ironically means she will be getting stoned. The author uses theme of the story to display how traditions are blindly followed for centuries even if they lack any meaning to them at all. She uses several metaphors and allusions throughout the story to convey this message. The significance of the paragraph is even though they do not remember the originally ritual of the lottery yet they do not forget to follow and participate in it every year.

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The Danger Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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The Danger of Tradition Traditionally many ancient societies would kill their people to sacrifice to God in order to obtain rain or a good harvest. These mindlessly, followed traditions were never critically thought about and therefore citizens died year after year. A similar tragedy occurs in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This story features a civilization much like our own but with one small difference, the town’s people hold a lottery every year and the town stones who ever loses to death.

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Imagine a society where killing somebody for the sake of a tradition is acceptable. In the short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson describes an ordinary village with normal people, but as the story progress the details of their yearly practice known as “the lottery” unravels to be more disturbing. The author subverts the readers’ expiations by persuading the reader into assuming “the lottery” is a ordinary tradition until unusual details and the behavior of the characters come into place. In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.

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“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is quite an unusually result than expected. This lottery takes place in a village of a couple hundred people with a “winner”. However this winner is not the win monney type of winner but rather stoned to death by the village people. Each man of the household takes a slip of paper from the black box, whichever household gets a black dot, has to run again with each family member taking an additional slip. The one with the black dot is made “winner”, which comes to be Tessie Hutchinson later in the short story.

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Old Man Warner said, “There’s an old saying, Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,” (pg.22, Line 260-270) Old Man Warner, the oldest inhabitant in the community, has lived to see 77 years of the lottery. This quote illustrates how the community cares more about their daily income than the people. It seems that they value the crops and money. In the context of the quote, two characters are talking about stopping the lottery, and one has claimed that it is foolish to stop the lottery, that one person’s life isn’t worth compared to the survival of the village.

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One of the most skillful and devastating aspects of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is that it constantly topples the reader’s expectations about what should happen next or even at all. This story is certainly suspense because it’s not until the very end until the reader knows what’s really in store for the “winner”. In the short story, The Lottery, Jackson states irony and betrayal mostly towards the end of the story because usually winning the lottery evokes a sense of luck but in this story it’s the total opposite. “Mr.Summers spoke frequently about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” The tradition of the black box wasn’t so much as tradition anymore but more towards just the violence.

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Although many who read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” believe it to be about a crazy town viciously slaughtering an innocent woman for the ritualized sacrifice to bring them a feastful harvest of corn, it very clearly demonstrates Jackson’s hope to educate readers of the horrors of society’s blind following using social conformity, tradition, and general acceptance. The story starts at around 10 o’clock a.m. on June 27, and children are stacking rocks. The whole town gathers around and picks one piece of paper per family, out of an old black box.

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Tradition is defined as a belief or any action that is being followed from one generation to the next and is being followed unquestionably. One of the example of the short story in which tradition is being followed blindly is “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson. The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a vicious and heinous tradition that the people in the community celebrate every year on 17th of June. People in this traditional community, every year hold a village wide in which everyone in the village are expected to participate. The lottery is held in a symbolic black box that holds hundreds of pieces of paper from where everyone in the village must choose one.

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Up until this point, readers expected the lottery to be similar to the lotteries we see nowadays, but that idea turned once Mr. Hutchinson started arguing with Mr. Summers over the drawing, because why would he argue about being the winner? However, immediately after Tessie is told to have the slip of paper with the black dot, the stones are brought up again in the story, "[a]lthough the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones" (Jackson 194). There, in the falling action of the story, it is revealed that Tessie will be not be given a reward, but will instead be

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Literary Analysis Of The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

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“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.

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Old Man Warner conveys the idea that the lottery is essential for the villages progress. Accordingly, this statement speaks to the importance of a useless and harmful practice in the minds of the villagers. The murderous tradition of the lottery is a normality for all the villagers, especially the children and displays their blind acceptance of an idle practice. When the winner of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson, is revealed, “ The children already [have] stones. And [...]

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Shirley Jackson’s “The lottery” is a story based on tradition. When hearing the word tradition, most people think of team rituals before games, or something families do together annually. However, Jackson is obviously not like most people. She builds up a fair amount of tension around this ritual that is taking place to make readers wonder what is going on. She uses many different techniques to show that sometimes, traditions are not always meant to go on forever.

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How Does Shirley Jackson Use Dramatic Irony In The Lottery

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She realizes that this is an unpleasurable and outdated tradition and should be forgotten only because she got chosen. However, if her family’s name wasn’t drawn, she would have blindly followed the ritual, thrilled to have escaped a gruesome, sacrificial death. As a reader it is easy to empathize for Tessie since she or others don’t have a voice in their community or are even able to look at the bigger picture and see that the lottery is unnecessary. Not only does the dramatic irony of the lottery allow the reader to understand Tessie’s view, it creates a similar feeling towards Bill Hutchinson. For example, “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand.

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The villagers are reluctant to give up their beliefs because they think that they might lose their distinction that separates them from others. Old Man Warner strongly disapproves of people who want to quit the lottery. He says, “There’s always been a lottery”3 so for him, these people are “crazy.”4 However, for the readers, his reluctance means that he is afraid to change his place within the society. He has gained the title of Old Man not only because he is the oldest man in the village but he has also been in the lottery for 77 years.

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