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The Penalty System In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a presumably cheerful story but leads to a grotesque, unpredictable, and twisted ending. The main focus, with in “The Lottery”, is primarily about the sadistic ritual in which the townspeople of an agricultural town murder one of their fellow citizens in a raffle styled lottery. One may ask why this type of system is held in order to decide what person will be executed and then ask whether or not it is fair to the unfortunate winner of the lottery. Mrs. Hutchinson even called out the lottery system, after her family was chosen for the next pick, yelling “It wasn’t fair!” (Jackson 45). However, unlike the popular argument that the lottery’s system is fair and that every citizen is given the chance of life or death in an equal manner, the lottery is significantly unfair for certain families. First of all, it is important to analyze the statistical chances any town member would have when they pick for the lottery. The lottery works in a two step system as Richard H. Williams discovers and writes about in his “Journal of Modern Literature”, “in the first stage of sampling one family is randomly selected,” (Williams) in the second …show more content…

For example, Mr. Summers takes note of every person who was able to attend the lottery. In addition, there were several “lists to make up” all detailing to number of households, families, and people participating in the lottery for that year. However, the attendance and accountancy for every family unit and citizen still does not account for the differing statistical probability every person receives when they become a finalist in the second stage. Furthermore, it is evident that some town members may disprove of the lottery. In turn one may excuse himself from the ritual, inevitably evading certain demise, thus giving themselves an unfair

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The Social Impartiality in ´´ The Lottery´´, by Shirley Jackson Have you ever witnessed a manifestation of injustice, but had preferred to step aside? If this is such a terrible attitude to assume, imagine how worst everything could be when the case is about a whole town keeping its arms crossed in the situation. In the story ´´ The Lottery´´ by Shirley Jackson, we can appreciate diverse uses of the literary elements of symbolism, theme and foreshadowing, used by the author to represent the degradation of a society immersed in the impartiality.

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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 short story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, the plot in the story that it only gives people an account of drawing lots to determine the winner who shall be stoned to death for harvest. However, we get a deep impression of the characters and their fate after reading the story. Jackson indicated a prevalent theme, the indirect of characterization and using symbolism and irony to modify this horror story. The Allegorical story of “ The Lottery” is often regarded as a satire of human behavior and social institutions, and exemplifies some of the central themes of Jackson’s fiction, including the victimization of the individual by society, the tendency of people to be cruel, and the presence of evil in everyday life.

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In The Lottery, the act of the lottery has taken place for many years. One of the oldest citizens of the town is celebrating his participation in his 77th lottery. He is dissatisfied with the way things related to the lottery have changed. He is also very weary of the communities who have quit practicing the lottery. He describes the communities that have stopped the practice of the lottery as a “pack of crazy fools” (Jackson, Literature)

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The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small town that conducts an annual lottery. The entire town gathers to participate in the sacrificial stoning of the so-called winner. Jackson’s aim for this story was to show the general evil of human nature and the unnecessary violence in the world. Jackson uses the third person point of view and a lot of characters to help convey the purpose of the story by distancing the reader from the characters. This shocks the reader at the ending and allows them to view the story from an outside perspective and see the reality of the situation.

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“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it” (William Penn). In the mid 1900’s, shortly after the war had ended, a woman named Shirley Jackson wrote the short story known as “The Lottery”. In “The Lottery” it stated Jackson’s messages that she gave for society to understand. She wrote “The Lottery” because she wanted to expose society for what it really was: corrupted and unjustly. After having “The Lottery” published she opened a door for many questions.

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Throughout centuries, traditions and rituals have had the ability to control one’s behavior. In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, she tells the reader of a small village. On the surface, this community may seem relatively normal. However, despite the picturesque appeal, this falsely serene village has a distinct deceitful flaw. On June 27th, every year, a lottery takes place.

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While real life traditions are rarely so extreme, Jackson’s exaggerated fictional example emphasizes her point to great effect. By the end of the story, the audience is convinced that the town is wrong to uphold the lottery tradition, but Jackson is not really writing about a lottery; she is writing about how damaging it can

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Human nature can be characterized as being positive, capable of altruism and goodness which sets humankind apart from savage animals; however, human nature possesses a dark side, namely cruelty, and it is capable of barbarism like any beast. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, cruelty is part of human nature, and the participants of the lottery demonstrate human cruelty through violence towards one another; markedly, by exhibiting desensitization to violence and the acceptance of violence resulting in internal dysfunction which is perpetuated yearly. Participants of the lottery belong to a close-knit community, and every year the community hosts an enigmatic lottery draw. The conclusion of the lottery draw is only mysterious until the outcome

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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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“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.

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