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Tradition And Tradition In Alice Walker's The Lottery

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Everyday use is a short story by Alice Walker published in her 1973 collection in Love and Trouble. This story revolves around the relationship between a mother and her daughters. The story concerns a young woman who has visited her mother in the village after a very long time. She thinks herself very educated and smart and attempts unsuccessfully to get the quilt which her mother had promised to gift to her younger daughter on her wedding. Another story, The Lottery is one of the most famous American short story written by Shirley Jackson. This story talks about the annual lottery that is drawn in a village. This is not the lottery where the winner goes home with a huge sum of money it is the lottery where the prize is death. Both the stories are contrast to each other but some how they have one common ground and that is the …show more content…

Here, the quilt is merely just not a quilt but a heritage. It was hand made by the grandmother and aunts of the family. It had a very high cultural as well as emotional values. It linked to the generations and the earlier generations. It represented the past as it was not only hand made but it also contained scraps of dresses that was worn by the grandmother and even great grandmother and a piece of uniform worn by great grandfather who served in the army. The quilt gives a true connection with the past and the heritage. The mother wanted to pass the tradition to her younger daughter by giving the quilt but Dee, her eldest daughter wanted it for herself, but mother did not give it to her.” I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she married John Thomas” (Walker). The story also shows the struggle over tradition as Dee changes the name to Wangero,” I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me”

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The poem, “The Century Quilt”, by Sarah Mary Taylor demonstrates the meaning of The Century Quilt through the use of tone, imagery and symbolism. This complex quilt has a way of bringing family together through means of remembrance, as the quilt will be passed on and on. Symbolism in this poem is most prominent in the title itself. “The Century Quilt” makes its implication of being passed on by the word, century. A century is a long period of time and within that time period the quilt will have been passed down through means of connecting with family.

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In Marilyn Nelson Waniek's "The Century Quilt" there is a diverse and loving home, and a sure symbol of generations of a family and childhood within the blanket. Through warm imagery and reminiscent tone, the measure of this quilt to Waniek's life is illustrated as a profound connection and admiration of her family and a nostalgic escape. The color illuminated imagery draws a relationship between family and love through the quilt. "

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After Wangero asks for the quilts for the first time, Mama shares that she promised to give them to Maggie at her wedding. Upset by this response, Wangero quickly attempts to convince her mother that Maggie isn't worthy of having the quilts. In paragraph 12, Wangero claims “maggie can't appreciate the quilts” and “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” She was trying to appeal to her mother's love and attachment to the quilts. She wanted to explain to her mother that if she gave maggie the quilts, they would get ruined so instead she should let Wangero have them so they could be preserved.

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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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879 Words | 4 Pages

In Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery the author creates a complex world, a world that possibly could resemble our world that we live in. Every year the villagers culminate in a violent murder, a bizarre ritual that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people blindly follow it. Shirley Jackson is a master at manipulating her reader, a tactic that pays off as the story unfolds and all of the things that once seemed pleasant are shown to have a very dark side. Jackson emphasizes the necessity of discarding the tradition of the lottery, because it doesn't fit in present day times. This allusion of sacrifice also suggests that the villagers view the lottery as normal, even necessary, as it is ritualized.

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1338 Words | 6 Pages

“the quilts are the central symbol of the story representing the connectedness of history and intergenerational tries of the family” (“everyday use”). This means that the quilts mean heritage and remind the daughters of grand mom dee. The quilts are fought over at the end of the story because of the meaning of them. One daughter wants them for everyday use and one wants them just to have them because it means heritage to her. The mother at the end of the story agrees that they should be used for everyday use.

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"The Lottery" is about a small town's tradition of holding an annual lottery. The community gathers each year to draw a piece of paper, and the winner of the lottery is stoned to death. The ending of the video is surprising because the audience discovers that the lottery is not for a prize, but rather to select a person to be stoned to death. This realization is shocking because it goes against the viewer’s expectations of what a lottery should be and reveals the horrifying nature of the tradition. At the beginning of the video, the town's annual lottery is introduced as a fun tradition that has taken place for generations.

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1474 Words | 6 Pages

“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).

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The story Everyday Use was written by Alice walker. Alice walker was an American author, poet and activist. She has written many novels, poems and stories. She wrote both fiction and nonfiction books. Everyday use was one of her books and it was published in 1973.

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1033 Words | 5 Pages

“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.

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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

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1283 Words | 6 Pages

‘Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!’ She said. ‘She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.’ … ‘But, they're priceless!’ ” (172).

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467 Words | 2 Pages

In her story "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson implies the negative consequences of blindly following tradition through the acceptance, by the villagers, of the tradition of the lottery. Jackson suggests that the people of the village are afraid to give up the little tradition they have, even if it is not good. Every year after the lottery, the conductor of the lottery, Mr. Summers suggests that they should build a new box but, “No one [likes] to upset even as much tradition as [is] represented by the box.” (Jackson, 1). The black box symbolizes ritual and tradition.

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1561 Words | 7 Pages

These quilts are a ways of honoring her African American heritage and to be given these was very significant in their culture. For once Dee sees the historical background because of the stitching and material used, but doesn’t find any use in using them. Dee is going to try and convince her mom to let her keep the quilts, when Dee says, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” (Walker 721) and “You just will not understand. The point these quilts, these quilts!”

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505 Words | 3 Pages

The villagers on “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson are afraid to let go of their tradition, the lottery. They are concern of unknown consequences that will happen if they change their old customs. So, for every year, the villagers gather at the square to do the lottery at 10 AM . The villagers are afraid to quit their outdated tradition because they think that changing their old customs will only bring trouble.

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