ipl-logo

Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

853 Words4 Pages

Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” is about a lottery that is held every year in a small town in New England. Everyone in the town participates in this lottery, including the women and children. Each year one person in the small town is stoned to death by the other townspeople. The lottery gives each person the equal chance of being the one to get stoned. Jackson uses names and objects to help us understand the theme of tradition and how it can be dangerous. The name “Mr.Summers” symbolizes the season in which the lottery is held. The story starts off by letting you know it’s summer. The thoughts of summer consist of happiness and warmth. The beginning of the story appears normal, perhaps even joyful, but as we continue to progress to the conclusion we become aware of the unfortunate twist. The lottery takes place every June 27th, not only for this village, but for many other surrounding …show more content…

The stool is supporting the black box, which is symbol of the evil tradition. This is trying to show religion supporting such violence like the lottery. Many individual parts of the tradition had changed throughout the years though. They changed wood chips to papers, both of these items representing the equal chance every member of the town have of getting stoned. Mrs. Hutchinson freaks out saying “It wasn’t fair” (Jackson 1) but Mrs. Graves stated that “All of us took the same chance” (Jackson 1). The black dot on the paper symbolizes death to whoever draws the paper with that symbol on it. The stones represent how they kill someone in the town and they probably have the children collect them to get them involved in the lottery. The lottery has been going on longer than the oldest man in town (Old Man Warner) has been alive, and they want the children to carry it on. The heads of the families are the only ones that can draw, usually men, even though the might not be the ones killed, in fact a woman was the one killed this year in the

Show More
Related
944 Words | 4 Pages

In the article, “Blue Collar Brilliance”, published in the summer of 2009 by Mike Rose in the American Scholar, Rose persuades people that the amount of someone’s educational level doesn’t justify their intelligence level and we shouldn’t base our opinions of their intelligence purely off their jobs. Since this article was published in the American Scholar his target audience is people of higher education and those who might hold stereotypes of blue collar workers. Rose is highly successful in persuading his audience to form new opinions on blue collar workers and their overall intelligence levels. He emphasizes his credibility throughout the article with anecdotes, a well thought out organization of his paper, as well as an elevated vocabulary

Read More
461 Words | 2 Pages

Conformity can make people do cruel things without reason. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” highlights a village that continues a senseless tradition of stoning the winner of a lottery. Although all the villagers initially seemed innocuous and welcoming, as soon as the winning ticket was drawn, everybody quickly turned against the winner, Mrs. Hutchinson. Through a stark, cold tone, Jackson brings attention to the dangers of unquestionable loyalty to old traditions. Jackson starts the story with antiquated characters that contribute to the blunt tone.

Read More
998 Words | 4 Pages

The black box in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson represents tradition. The black box had been the same box when the lottery first began; it has since been passed down over the years. In the short story it’s described as falling apart and hardly black anymore after years of use. The tradition is to remember the ancestors who had been sacrificed and thus the townspeople keep the box and use it every year. Although, the black box can be interpreted to represent death.

Read More
654 Words | 3 Pages

Symbolism is used multiple times throughout “The Lottery.” Mr. Summers is the person who calls people up to draw. His name symbolizes when the lottery takes place, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day;.” Mr. Warner is the oldest man in the village and obviously has done the lottery the most times. People around the village are talking about getting rid the lottery.

Read More
692 Words | 3 Pages

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, Is about a lottery being held in a small town with 300 people in an unknown country. Every year a lottery is being held where one person is randomly chosen to be stoned to death by individuals in the village, in order to follow the tradition of stoning the person who has a black dot on the slip of paper. Jackson uses symbolism based on the characters name, objects and the setting to allow the readers to identify the true meaning of the story. Firstly, the names of the characters have a great symbolic meaning towards the ending of the story.

Read More
605 Words | 3 Pages

This symbolism foreshadows to the danger and death involved in the lottery. The box is also described as falling apart. The town’s people do not want to replace it because of stories they were told about the box being made of pieces of the box preceding it, all the way to the first people who started the tradition (Jackson 313). This reluctance to let go of something that is falling apart and broken represents their reluctance to get rid of the lottery although it is broken and illogical. This is how Jackson represents the danger of tradition; no matter how crazy, harmful, or backwards that tradition, if it is something a society is used to, it will continue to follow the

Read More
593 Words | 3 Pages

Shirley Jackson says "the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers but the black box on it". This is disturbing detail that makes the reader wonder what is in the mysterious box .This detail ultimately leads to the terrifying ending. The people choosing from the box is another disturbing fact. Jackson writes “Mr. Summers declared the box to be open" and adresses "There had been a ritual

Read More
193 Words | 1 Pages

In the story “Eleven” the girl named Rachel acts more like a child than a tween. Rachel acts more like a child than a tween because in the story the author mention that She cried like when she was three in front of everyone in her class. This proves that Rachel is a child because kids in my grade don’t cry like when they were three because they have to put on a sweater that isn’t theirs. Another reason Rachel acts more like a tween than a child is when the character Rachel Claims that her face was all hot and spit was coming out. Me, my friends, and every when else I know that’s eleven don’t throw fits especially like that.

Read More
355 Words | 2 Pages

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

Read More
881 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
941 Words | 4 Pages

The whole purpose of the lottery was never truly stated but the why this village continues the lottery is because tradition is tradition. That is why Mr. Summers always runs the lottery, the lottery is always drawn from the same black box, the lottery always takes place on June 27th, and the winner is stoned. No matter how cruel this tradition is, as Old Man Warner (a villager) says, “there’s always been a lottery” (Jackson 375). Just like how there's always been a mingi in Ethiopian culture. According to the article, “Is the tide turning against the killing of ‘cursed’ infants in Ethiopia” the author, Matthew D. LaPlante, states that a mingi is “cursed, according to their [the ethiopians] ancient superstitions” (2).

Read More
374 Words | 2 Pages

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, each year the people of the town had a lottery. And every year another person dies to the lottery. The lottery has little meaning left to the people of the town and now they are only doing it for the sake of tradition. Now it is different for the settlers of the town. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’

Read More
467 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
649 Words | 3 Pages

However, it is quite opposite of what the story portrays. What the reader does not see from the beginning of the story and does not capture until midway through, is that the lottery is actually something awful. When the lottery processions proceed the story starts to develop a more serious and somber mood. The townspeople show no remorse or empathy for one another and friendships slowly diminish. This is especially true when they know they will soon have to stone to death the villager who has drawn the marked paper; for instance, when Mrs. Delacroix picks up the biggest rock to bludgeon to death, the winner, Mrs. Hutchinson.

Read More
926 Words | 4 Pages

This indicates that the tradition has been going on for so long, the people that grow up with this find it normal to be done. The old man who criticized the other towns that grew tired of the Lottery has been used to seeing the Lottery around for so long and had actually supported the reason behind it. Next to the rocks in symbolism was the stool as well as the black box. The black box which was used to draw the pieces of paper symbolizes the key between life and death.

Read More

More about Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Related Topics

Open Document