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Analysis essay over the lottery
Analysis essay over the lottery
Analysis essay over the lottery
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Usually there’s a winner in a lottery, but not in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This story intrigued me by it's suspenseful nature and it's chaotic events. In small town America, they come together once a year to perform an annual tradition. Mrs. Jackson demonstrates literary devices such as foreshadowing, mood, and conflict in “The Lottery”. Foreshadowing is used quite a few times in “The Lottery”.
“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.
By painting a disturbing picture of the violent act of stoning, Jackson draws attention to the harmful consequences of blindly following a tradition. Jackson writes "Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box" (paragraph 73). The community has lost sight of the original purpose of the tradition, yet still continue to carry it out with such brutality, highlights the dangers of thoughtlessly continuing traditions. The boys, who have already prepared their rock piles, symbolize the community's unthinking adherence to the tradition, without questioning its morality or relevance.
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.
One of the pieces of paper has a black dot on it, and the family that receives the black dot has to draw again, this time facing the possibility of death. In the story, Bill Hutchinson has the black dot, and his wife starts screaming about how unfair it is. She starts yelling about how it’s rigged, and how Bill didn’t get to pick the piece of paper he wanted. Her neighbors started yelling at her to shut up, and telling her to be a good sport.
In contrast to the autobiography Night, is about the own habitants of a village participating in a raffle that consists on selecting who is going to be stoned to death. The names of all the habitants are dispose on an old black box in the annual event that takes place in a square among the post office and the bank each June 27th and the murder lottery begins. The fact that the event is called “The Lottery”, makes the audience think that the person selected will be the winner. Unfortunately, it is completely the opposite, instead of being a winner it is a victim, as the lottery takes away the winner’s life. It might even be at first exciting since it can be considered like a game for the villagers since they do not know who will be chosen, but when the hostess calls out the name that can be someone that they might know or their own person, stops being electrifying.
The story of “ The Lottery ” by Shirley Jackson is a very surprising story especially towards the end. It causes great consternation and shock when we learn that the winner of the lottery - Tessie Hutchinson, does not win an award, rather finds herself stoned to death. This somewhat shows the role that superstition played years ago. It was widely prevalent and as we progressed in terms of science and technology, we have come to break apart from such harmful traditions. It is precisely due to these superstitions, often many an innocent life has been taken without just cause.
The authors and directors produce works that involve shocking deaths that are to make people question an aspect of their life. In “The Lottery” by Jackson she wants to warn people about the dangers of not accepting change. The people in the story discuss how other villages are no longer doing the age-old tradition but they scoff and say that they will continue to do it. When describing the ceremony the townspeople do not even know how to proceed. The tradition is so old that they no longer know why they continue with it.
“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).
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.
“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones... Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.” (Jackson).
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
The Lottery Theme The Lottery is a thrilling story written by Shirley Jackson that depicts a gruesome town that sacrifices a member each year for the purpose of good crops. Although in the beginning the town appears to be rather benign and tight-knit, we learn too soon that it’s quite the opposite. This short story possesses many promising themes, but a possible theme in this story is that change is deeply resented and feared by many, but often times, it’s better if it occurs anyway. Even though Old Man Warner thought that it was wrong to adjust the ritual or complete it without the right intuition, he thought it would be more absurd to terminate it, saying that without the lottery, young folks would be “wanting to go back to living in caves”
“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.