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Unfairly Stoned To Death In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

456 Words2 Pages

“The Lottery”, a twisted tale of how people are unfairly stoned to death because they are the winner of the lottery. The tradition is that every year people gather around and all the men draw paper out of a black box; which ever man pulls the marked paper out is subject to him and his family redrawing to see which member of the family is stoned to death. The story is full of literary devices like settings, themes, and symbols that give a deeper meaning to “The Lottery”. The major theme in “The Lottery” is unfair persecution of an individual. Tessie had no reason to be stoned to death. She was a popular housewife and individual in the village. The Randomness of persecution is what really makes the story unique. The reason she was murdered was because of the marked paper she had drawn. It is scary how quickly Tessie’s family and friends turn on her because she drew the marked paper. The random prosecution shows how people in the story and in real life can unexplainably take part in cruel traditions or acts for no known reason. …show more content…

Since the story takes place in a small rural area it makes since as to why the lottery still takes place. The people are less educated and have not experienced much other culture outside of what is known by the villagers; many of the villagers are old and have taken part in the lottery their whole life. The elderly villagers make remarks about how nothing good can come from quitting the lottery because of hearing that other villages have quit participating in it. Because the setting is in a small town it is hard to break traditions no matter how good or bad the tradition

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Tessie Hutchinson should not have been stoned to death in The Lottery. She was completely innocent of any crime that we know of, had a family that she was taking care of, and seemed to be one of the only voices of reason in the village. When she is introduced, she is portrayed as a funny wife. She forgot that it was June 27th because she was taking care of the house for her family. She called out that the lottery system wasn’t fair, they even said that every year it gets faster and faster.

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Most people know the lottery as a contest to win money. But in the short story, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, the lottery is not a simple game competing for money. In this small village’s version of the lottery, everyone must draw out of a box, and if their family is chosen then the whole family must redraw and the death of a member is decided. After the fate is decided, the rest of the village throws stones at him or her until he or she dies. The villages reasoning of this process is they believe it guarantees a plentiful crop season.

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“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, is a short story expressed through the theme of apathy, when the community feels no emotion for anyone, that a ritual is more important than a human being, mob mentality, and hypocrisy which is prevalent within the townspeople. It may help learning more about Shirley Jackson to better understand why she wrote such a horrific story like, “The Lottery.” Shirley Jackson moved into a small town, Bennington, Vermont, where she wasn’t accepted within her town which shows she was thinking how cruel people can be. Not being accepted is not the same as being stoned or killed, but it has the capacity for cruelty. Through this, Shirley Jackson is suggesting that we need to examine ourselves and our actions carefully and live our lives consciously instead of

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The purpose of Tessie as a protagonist is to demonstrate how emotionally detached the town citizens are and give insight to how that mindset tailors the plot of the story. Throughout the story Tessie fails to save her own life, but the residents do far more than kill tessie, they kill her because this tradition has been

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The short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs explores the dangerous consequences of unchecked desires through the effective use of literary techniques such as juxtaposition, foreshadowing, and symbolism. Jacobs skillfully weaves these techniques throughout the narrative to convey the message that unbridled desires can ultimately lead to destruction. Through the examination of key quotes in the story, we can unravel how the author employs these literary devices to support his theme. Juxtaposition In "The Monkey's Paw," Jacobs utilizes juxtaposition to highlight the stark contrast between the characters' desires and the consequences that follow.

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If your best friend won the lottery would you stone them to death? This is a story about a yearly ritual in a town of about 300 villagers by Shirley Jackson where the villagers kill one resident in order to have an abundant crop. The story leaves readers feeling confused as why a family turned on one another and was basically hypocritical when it came to one of their own members being stoned to death. To begin with, Bill Hutchinson’s desire to hush his wife shows his lack of concern for her safety. The safety of his wife is no real concern because he knew that someone in the village may get stoned that day and if he didn’t want one of his own to lose their life they would have moved out of the village.

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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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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.

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Contrary to the normal lottery, in this case one person is randomly selected to be killed by stoning, something the villagers believe to be good for the village. This tradition is accepted by everyone in the village, in fact, including women and children. The author of this story shows the theme of conflict and controversy that hits the lottery. The lottery’s tradition is taken in several different ways because it is unexamined.

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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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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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Many people would die to win the lottery; in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you would do anything NOT to win this lottery. This annual lottery reveals the negative aspects of this town’s Tradition, Savagery, Barbarism, and cold-heartedness. In this paper I will show why this town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because of the accepting wickedness that can be shown. Why does the town follow this foolish tradition? Throughout “The Lottery” the narrator tells that the people do not remember how the lottery began, and that some of the older people believe the lottery has changed over the years, that now people just want to get it over with as fast as possible.

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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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