The lottery stirs strong emotions within most of the characters Shirley Jackson
In 1948, when the New Yorker published Shirley Jacksons piece, “The Lottery,” it sparked outrage among readers, but could arguably be known as one of her most famous pieces of writing. In this short story, Shirley Jackson used literally elements such as imagery, diction, and symbolism to foreshadow the negative and harsh ending of the story; the harsh ending that sparked such outrage by society in the 1940’s. One of the main ways Jackson foreshadows the ending and true meaning of her short story, “The Lottery,” is through symbolism. Jackson uses the color black throughout the story.
But the lottery they have is different then our type of lottery where everyone has to participate but instead of getting money or a prize they get killed by stones. “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”. “This is a direct quote”(199). This was a hint that she was going to get stoned to death.
The town seems like it is averse to changing the lottery, due to the length of time they have been actively doing the lottery. Since the town has been actively doing the tradition for at least seventy-seven years, some of the people think that society cannot function without having the lottery. When Mr. Adam said that a town from the north stopped doing the lottery, Old Man Warner called them fools and said “Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody works any more, live that way for a while.” paragraph 12: Line 1. The quote shows how important the lottery is for him, and how he does
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.
Additionally, they feel as though they won't be tormented with some kind of disaster. The last motivation behind why the villagers hold the lottery is on the grounds that it is something they have been carrying out for so long, townspeople have recently made it a meaningless practice. The practice of the lottery is still unknown, but there are many pieces of evidence that
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.
But maybe they do the lottery because for another reason. During the story Old Man Warner says that if they
When Mrs. Hutchinson gets picked and everyone gangs up on her, they telling everyone “Come on, come on, everyone” in order to finish the lottery. The townspeople are barbaric because they want everyone to join in- even her family. By bringing in her family in order to stoned Mrs. Hutchinson, the villagers showed their barbaric side. Their barbaric side is that they tell everyone to hurry up and that everyone needs to join in. To conclude, Shirley Jackson uses the townspeople to show how society is
“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).
The characters’ behaviors don’t exactly scream “I love the lottery!” The most logical reason for doing something that makes them unhappy is they are doing it as a tradition. But why not break the tradition? After digging a little deeper, it is easy to see that the lottery has been going on for a long time: “There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here (p. 16, lines 78-82).” Since the original black box was made when the village first settled, the lottery is an ancient tradition that is generations old.
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.
“To put symbolism into a definition, it is when an object or an action has many layers of meaning in a story. These meanings may not be apparent at first glance, but will become more clear as they are considered throughout the story. The object or action’s meaning will be something other than simply it’s literal meaning” (Heichel). Symbolism plays a critical role in both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Furthermore, the authors of both stories incorporated objects such as a black box and a mockingjay to have a much deeper meaning than their obvious literal meaning.
As a reader of “The Lottery”, I will give many reasons for why this work should have been published, but first let me explain the messages this story conveys to the readers. This story makes the reader face the fact of do humans blindly follow traditions or rituals without knowing what these true actions mean. Are humans sometimes clueless about what they do? As Shirley Jackson writes in her short story about how the “It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (Jackson 34). A scene like this is only one of many horrifying depictions throughout the story that test your morals.
In “the lottery” there are a few key characters that contribute a lot to the story line, Mr. summers the man who conducts the lottery is of course, one of them. Mr. summers name holds a significance to it because of the lottery being connected to him in a huge way. Mr. summers prepares the slips of paper that go into the black box and calls the names of the people who draw the papers. He is the owner of a coal company and is one of the village leaders and is married to a miserable wife with no kids. Mr. summers is a happy man who is efficient with conducting the lottery.
