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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.
“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.
Shirley Jackson a very popular author well known for her short story called “The lottery” which always leaves the reader thinking. “The Lottery” was published on June 28, 1948 which is just weeks after it was written. Some other pieces written by Jackson are “The Haunting of Hill House”, “We have always lived in the castle” as well as “Life among the savages”. Jackson tends to write about horror and mystery and has many other pieces with supernatural themes. Many pieces written by Jackson have a small-town setting that end with horror.
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.
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.
Everyone usually has a family tradition that they do every year. Every year my family celebrates Christmas during Christmas we wake up and open gifts and go to my grandparents house for dinner and usually open more gifts. In my short story “The Lottery” their tradition is putting names into a box and if your name gets called and there is a black dot on your slip,you get rocks thrown at you until you die. In The Lottery Jackson uses the black box to symbolize death and if you're going to die.
The short story “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson. This story takes place in a small village where everybody knows each other. In this story all the villagers gather around town for their annual lottery. Everyone in the village is compelled to follow this tradition even if the outcome ends up with someone dying. In “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses conflict, theme, and irony to develop this suspenseful short story.
Additionally, the black box Old Man Warner brings to the square holds more than the “original paraphernalia for the lottery”, which was lost long ago (Jackson, 1948). The box shows importance and unknown powers that gives the reader a hint that its use draws the supposedly winning lottery. Then there was Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson, a woman who was late to the sacred meeting, which set her apart from the other families gathered at the square on time. The fact she was late isolated the character and possibly foreshadowed her secluded fate (Marshall, 2014). The use of foreshadowing builds up an unforthcoming tension throughout the story, leaving the reader searching for relief.
“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.
The Lottery itself represents a primal example of loss of innocence; portrayed through the young boys who gather at the town square to collect rocks for the horrors soon to follow. An illustration of how traditions can lose their true meanings and come to represent violence and warfare. Furthermore, “The Lottery” also represents the decaying characteristics of traditions, as symbolized by the town’s black box, in this case where every year, someone’s name is drawn out of the black box and they are stoned to death, by other members who may or may not end up to be family. Nonetheless, it ends up to be the villagers who
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.
The Symbolism of The Lottery One big symbol that the short story is discreet about is the black box that is repeated throughout the short story symbolizes fear to adults which could affect even the most innocent. The black box appears to be the only paraphernalia that is still being used in the tradition of having a lottery. Mr. Summers is the one who is running the lottery at the time. Mr. Summers is seen as a nice man, however, when he is introduced, he is seen with the black box. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story that uses the black box as a symbol to convey an underlying message that when the power of a tradition is given to a person, it could lead a crumbling society.
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 main symbols displayed in the lottery are the rocks, the black box, as well as the stool. The rocks symbolize the method of death. Stoning was a common way of killing people who had to pay a price of some sort. However, they would want to make the experience painful and drawn-out.
