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Shirley Jackson Comparison

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The short story, “The Lottery” was written and published in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War. During World War II, there was a system set up called the draft in which the government chooses groups of young men to fight at random. This was very scary and chosen at random for the young men. The draft, in a few ways, refers a lot to “The Lottery” and Shirley Jackson was surely influenced by the recent war in the making of this short story. It is a totally random and scary for the individuals called in both instances. One similarity between the two events was the necessity of it. On September 16th, 1940, President Roosevelt signed the STSA. This Selective Training and Service Act required all men ages 21 to 45 to register for this draft. This was similar to the lottery in the short story how Mr. Summers required everyone participated in the annual ritual. Going along with the fact that it was required, people found ways to get out of …show more content…

After signing up for the draft, the military randomly selected groups of men that met random requirements to serve in the army. This shows the anxiety the men had and the randomness also. The lottery was very related in this way. “Winning” the lottery was all by chance, just like the draft. Also, if one was chosen for the draft, than they would possibly die even if they were innocent. That is identical to the lottery whereas if someone were chosen, they would be doomed, it did not matter if the person was innocent or not. The draft is a random way to call society to serve and possibly die, similar to the lottery where one is randomly called to die. It’s also random to who gets called. It is a very scary way to do things and random in each similar occasion. Imagine anxiously awaiting whether a person is to die or not. It is a completely random chance for one to die. It would be very scary, especially because it has nothing to do with

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793 Words | 4 Pages

That was was called the Draft Lottery. On the first of December 1969, the Selective Service System conducted the first lottery draft since 1942. There were 366 plastic capsules that were put into a jar and each capsule had a year on it. Each capsule that was drawn received a draft number. Then the way they were called to duty by their draft number until the needs were met for the military troops.

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103 Words | 1 Pages

The story of The Lottery instantly reminded me of The Hunger Games as well. There are some very visible parallels between The Lottery and the reaping ceremonies of The Hunger Games. In both cases innocent people are selected at random to be killed and there 's nothing that can be done about it. Very similarly, each year people gather in their town square to meet their fates. We don 't know when the tradition of the lottery started and it 's impossible to know when it will end.

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2309 Words | 10 Pages

Reading Level (Lexile): 1230. , Database: MasterFILE Premier This source is incredible for its incredible recognition of the irony and symbolism that is represented in “The Lottery”. The source really states that the “The Lottery” is the underpinning definition of post-World War 2. The date of the lottery and irony of the characters names that Shirley Jackson presents, all convey a meaning that is even more shocking than the conclusion of the story.

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222 Words | 1 Pages

The Lottery is a short story about a town of people that will crowd and all the men will get a slip of paper all the paper is blank… besides one and that one has a black dot, so a lucky person will get it and if they have a kid older than 16 they have play this game, anyway the winner will get a “prize”. The Lottery story and The Lottery movie have many things that were different. The Lottery story is different from The Lottery movie by where it is located and where the event took place, such as in the story they were sacrificing someone in a large field while in the movie they were stopped by the building. If they didn’t have the building in the way she could have lived longer while if they did she would have died sooner.

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

The Vietnam War called for the 1969 Draft Lottery due to a shortage of

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1019 Words | 5 Pages

Thematic similarities between Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” After reading the short stories, “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, one would see striking similarities. Although the stories reflect different times and cultures, the theme of irony seem to parallel throughout both work. Both stories, share plots and characters that seem to contradict what one would expect. Both stories begin by introducing the setting, which includes not only dates, times and locations, but also the season. Both writers wish to convey some sort of feeling.

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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.

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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.

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471 Words | 2 Pages

It was almost a way of life and if it was not followed there were dire consequences. The story starts to become ironic when specified what the lottery really means to them. A lottery, in any other community, is seen as a chance to win rewards that are in your favor. Within this town, it’s a chance to murder a single person every year. The main idea Jackson make in “The Lottery” is that people can come to together to perform this terrible act and then completely forget about.

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253 Words | 2 Pages

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is about analyzing traditional social and class divisions. Because the story is asking us to think about the ceremony and traditions that we careless following as members of our society. The story is analysis the ways custom is concealed right and wrong, the lottery is becoming a way to analysis social and class divisions. The random samples of paper mean that some of the family are fortunate and that others aren’t fortunate.

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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.

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1675 Words | 7 Pages

Yet Jackson wrote "The Lottery" in 1948—before gang violence, teen suicides, the threat of nuclear war, and handgun crimes reached epidemic proportions. Was Jackson looking into the future of the American society?"(Hicks). The story of the lottery truly could be foreshadowing of the future and how we nowadays are. We don’t see the importance of each other's life, no matter if it's one person or a hundred. We would sacrifice each other to fill our own foolish greed.

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926 Words | 4 Pages

This story still remains relevant in comparison to today. Simple towns people who speak to each other on a daily basis and joke around with each other all of the sudden turn around and kill one of their one. This story symbolized the change of heart within people when events go on. With various symbols, Shirley Jackson created the short story, The Lottery, to show society and what it has been and what it could be. One might even say that Jackson wanted to keep it in the mind of a ‘modern’ society that such things could happen again.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

As ‘The Lottery’ is a short story, the author doesn’t expound each and every detail. There is a ‘vacuum’ in the story, but it is a desirable vacuum. It leaves a room for diverse imaginations, accommodating an active participation of its readers. For example, the author doesn’t give much information about the lottery or characters. All we know about the lottery is that it is an old tradition that involves

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1036 Words | 5 Pages

The short story, The Lottery appeared on the June 26, 1948 edition of The New Yorker. Although the subscribers noticed nothing different about this edition of The New Yorker, it contained a story that would arouse divergent feelings among the readers and the public in equal measure. In fact, this story continues to elicit these feeling even in the 21st century, resulting in heated debates whenever the story comes up. It remains as controversial a story as it was more than half a century ago. The initial reaction after the initial publishing of the story was widespread outcry, which made Shirley Jackson, the author, a literary villain.

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