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Thematic essay on the lottery
Thematic essay on the lottery
Thematic essay on the lottery
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Thematic essay on the lottery
Thematic essay on the lottery
Thematic essay on the lottery
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“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.
Would you follow something without thought? In the novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, the community follows particular rules with no question. In the short story, “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, the villagers kill a person each year without thinking. Therefore, Jackson and Lowry develop the message of people following others blindly without questioning.
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson was published on June 26, 1948. Some of her other works include “The Haunting of Hill House”, “Hangsaman”, And “The Sundial”. Jackson is known for many things but mostly for her Horror/Mystery stories as they are known to captivate the reader. Shirley Jackson is a very prolific author because she to brings a unique form of writing to her readers. This is seen through her many novels and short stories as the reader is greeted with something new in each one.
In the story “the lottery” by shirley Jackson the village kept the black box for more than when the oldest man in town was born, they are throwing rocks/killing people they care about, and Old Man Warner says, “there has always been a lottery.” The town is blindly following a tradition that leaves a disaster. LE Modesitt Jr. an American author once said, “Rules are useful guidelines and generally should be needed. But blindly following them eventually and inevitably leads to a disaster.”
Many characters in the story have different viewpoint on the lottery. Old Man Warner was one of the advocates for this ritual for many reasons. In the book, it says how there has always been a lottery and how after, they would be eating stewed chickweed and acorns, suggesting that he still believes that the ritual would bring good crops and how it has always been a thing so why give it up now. One person that doesn’t like the lottery is Tessie Hutchinson. When she knew her husband got the slip of paper, she said how it was unfair and he didn’t get enough time to pick the piece of paper.
Traditions are not always what they seem to be. In “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, this central idea is clearly stated through the use of symbolism. The text states, “There’s always been a lottery," he added petulantly. " Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.
In addition, the superstition of it all does not come to an end yet. Old man Warner remains stuck in his ways as he views the lottery to be necessary for the people of the village. Old man Warner announces his blunt beliefs toward the lottery aloud for those present to listen and criticized how other villages discontinued the tradition. Warner states, “Nothing but trouble in that...pack of young fools” (246). He believes that the ceremony is crucial to a booming village and represents the dedication to his seventy-seventh year of participation while warning others what would happen if the tradition of the ceremony were to be forgotten.
“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay"(Jiddu Krishnamurti).The lottery is a story about horror and what can happen about having tradition for too long. What I think Shirley Jackson wants us to learn about this story is to not have a tradition for so long, be smart about my choices and not to do things that I know that are not good. Shirley Jackson wrote poetry and kept journals throughout her life. “Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1919.
“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).
“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.
In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing when the children are collecting stones from the river and putting them into piles. It hints that something bad is going to happen because it is unusual for boys to be grabbing stones and randomly put them into a pile. For example, while the towns people were getting ready for the lottery the narrator states, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example,selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix, eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys.” (Jackson). This quotation shows that the boys in the village are finding the smoothest and roundest stones and putting them into a big pile.
In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the author has demonstrated each symbol and the meaning that holds behind them. The black box is culturally known as a dark and evil color. It represents the fate of the people in town, and the three-legged stool is used as a support for the black box to lay on top of the object. Stoning is ancient.
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.
“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.
The Lottery The short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson proposes an annual lottery drawing in a little village set in New England. However, unlike any usual lottery, the winner is stoned to death by their fellow townsmen, women and children included. The lottery seems to have been a custom around the area for over seventy years.