The following two paragraphs are a summary of Gloria Jimenez's essay Against the Odds and Against the Common Good. States should neither allow nor encourage state-run lotteries. There are five major arguments that people use to defend lotteries. One is that most lotteries are run honestly, but if gambling is harmful to society it is irrelevant to argue if they are honest or not. The second is that lotteries create jobs, but there are only a small handful of jobs that would be eliminated if lotteries were put out of business. Another argument that would support keeping lotteries is that, other than gambling addicts, people freely choose to buy lottery tickets. This is true, however, there are misleading advertisements that may cause people to buy tickets under false pretenses.
A forth argument that defends lotteries is that the funds from lotteries benefit honorable causes like educational and social services. While this is true, there are other means that the government could make up for that money. This leads us into the last of the counterarguments, which is the fear that if the government gets rid lotteries they will have to raise taxes to make up for the lack of funding. Since most lottery tickets are shown to be bought by people with low income, raising taxes is a better option then letting these educational services be funded by mostly the poor people and gambling addicts. Getting rid of state-run lotteries and raising taxes would balance out who is funding these services. While it is legal to smoke, because it is harmful, it is not encouraged, just as it should be with lotteries. The state shouldn’t encourage or even tempt people to waste away their money in hopes of getting lucky and winning big.
Analysis: Jimenez u...
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...back it up with substantial evidence. Readers may question her reliability because of her to lack of evidence and because most of the evidence she does have she doesn’t tell us where her information came from. While she has briefly told her readers about some of the negative effects of state-run lotteries, like teaching people that luck is better than hard work, she doesn’t show us that they are negative with evidence. She also didn’t write about any positive outcomes that may come from getting rid of lotteries, although she does show us some negative ones, like less funding for schools and the possibility of the government having to raise taxes. I learned more about how much it supports education than how much it negatively effects us as American's. After reading this essay I wonder if the benefits of state-run lotteries are greater than they first appeared to me.
We see a very disturbing ending in the Shirley Jackson’s, The Lottery where the reader believes that the lottery in mention is solely a monetary game of chance, like in our lives presently. However,
In her first publication, “Against the Odds, and Against the Common Good”, Gloria Jiménez tries to convince the readers that the lottery business is urging people to gamble. The thesis is apparent in the first paragraph: “Still, when all is said and done about lotteries bringing a bit of excitement into the lives of many people and bringing a vast amount of money into the lives of a few, the states should not be in the business of urging people to gamble” (118). The author successfully presents valid arguments to support her opposition to state-run lotteries throughout the essay; whether the evidence will properly convince most readers the way she wants them to, is questionable. Although the valid arguments and evidence Jiménez provides is adequate for the essay, I believe only one argument really stands out to convince her readers the purpose of the essay.
Prior to reading about this study I had always thought that richer people played the lottery much more than those with less money. I always just assumed that because the rich had a lot of money that they just played for the heck of it and could afford to spend hundreds of dollars on purchasing tickets. But after the conclusion of their experiment proved otherwise I was pretty shocked., and after reading why it was that poorer people actually spent more on tickets it made so much more sense and I was able to see exactly why that was.
The theme in “The Lottery” is violence and cruelty. Violence and cruelty is a major theme because there is a lot of violence and cruelty in the world. The Lottery has been read as addressing such issues as the public's fascination with salacious and scandalizing journalism, McCarthyism, and the complicity of the general public in the victimization of minority groups, epitomized by the Holocaust of World War II. The Holocaust was very cruel and violent cause other people didn’t like certain people so they just kill them and their children and still now we have violence and cruelty with wars and people that hate each other.
The meaning of the word “Lottery” is a “gambling game or method of raising money, as for some public charitable purpose, in which a large number of tickets are sold and a drawing is held for certain prizes” (“The Definition of Lottery”). In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, published in 1948, the word “lottery” takes on a whole new meaning. The lottery is a game of chance but not the chance that the winner will be rewarded greatly if you win. It’s the chance of having the townspeople chase and throwing stones at the “winner.” “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 144). On top of this short story being an interesting read, it is also depicts many literary terms, the main
In The Lottery, inhumane and cruel traditions are the general plot of the story. Once a year, the town randomly chooses a person to sacrifice in a process known as the lottery. The ‘winner’ of the lottery could be anyone: all the citizens of the town have an equal chance of being picked. The friends and family of the winner immediately turn against them and instinctively lose any feelings of respect for the person and begin to stone them to death. Tradition is tradition and the lottery is all that anyone has ever known. The town doesn’t even realize what they’re doing is wrong and cruel – they just follow orders because they’ve always had a lottery and they can’t imagine life without one. “‘Some places have already quit lotteries.’ Mr. Adams said. ‘Nothing but trouble in that,’ Old Man Warner said stoutly. ‘Pack of young fools’” (Jackson 4). Although other towns are quitting the lotteries because they realize they’re wrong and unjust, this village refuses to stray from tradition. A tradition so inhumane and violent should be abandoned, but unfortunately no one sees it that way until they wi...
Michelson, D. The historical reception of Shirley Jackson's "the lottery". In: KURZBAN, Robert; PLATEK, Steve. 18th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. 2006.
Everyday, there are a lot of people who play lottery in Texas. Is the lottery a good idea? Can we get happiness from winning the lottery? There are more questions to be considered concerning to the lottery. In this paper, I will write about the Texas Lottery Commission, and how it was established, its purpose, the organization and the current leader.
“The Lottery” was quite disturbing to read. It is an very unusual story that has an ending that will have you baffled. You will want to reread certain parts to see if there is anything thing that you could have missed. The title of the short story is also misleading. In most cases the lottery is a good thing. People don’t win punishment and lotteries don’t hurt them. But in this story it does just that. The author did a great job of telling how anyone and everyone can follow tradition blindly. It is dangerous not to have a mind of your own and to just follow the crowd even if you don’t understand on agree on why something is happening.
Typically, when someone thinks of a lottery they think of something positive and exciting but contrary to this idea in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the connotation has an entirely different meaning. As the story begins, readers lean towards the belief that the town in which Jackson depicts is filled with happiness and joy. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 247) We soon realize that this notion is far from the truth. As the townspeople gather in the square for the annual lottery, which sole purpose is to stone someone to death by randomly pulling a paper out of a black box with a black dot on it, it is learned
Shirley Jackson was a criticized female writer that wrote about US’s scramble for conformity and finding comfort in the past or old traditions. When Jackson published this specific short story, she got very negative feedback and even death threats. In the fictionial short story, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, a drawing takes place during the summer annually in a small town in New England. In this particular work, the lottery has been a tradition for over seventy years and has been celebrated by the townspeople every year. In detail, Richard H. Williams explains in his “A Critique of the Sampling Plan Used in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery””, he explains the process of how the lottery works. “The sampling plan consists of two
In terms of how the state lotteries are being portrayed in the marketing aspect, in terms of advertisement is an issue that I consider to be unethical in how they go about advertising the lottery to people. What these advertisers do is, they tend to target people who are less fortunate or do not have a steady income; and make them feel that they have a chance at winning if they just buy these tickets. According to the article The Ethics of Lottery Advertising: Issues and Evidence, it
The short story, “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson shows the character’s different feelings about the lottery. Mrs. Hutchinson at the lottery seemed like she did not like the lottery because she was late to the lottery and she says it is unfair. Mrs. Hutchinson said her family did not have time to pick for the lottery and said it was unfair. This shows that some people have a different opinion and thoughts on the lottery and some people may or may not like it as much as the others. People have different outlooks on the lottery most of the people thinks it is good luck and some may think it is bad in general. Another character, Old Man Warner likes the lottery and does not want it to stop. When Mr. Adams tells Old Man Warner that the northern
The lottery is a form of gambling. It is the selling of numbered tickets with numbers the consumer has chosen for a drawing at a later date. When the numbers are randomly chosen, rewards are given to those with the corresponding digits. This is mostly used as a way to raise money and to provide cheap entertainment. Gambling in America recently conducted a poll finding that 57 percent of Americans reported buying a lottery ticket in the past 12 months (Www.naspl.org). People with incomes in excess of $75,000 spend roughly three times as much on lotteries each month as do those with incomes under $25,000 (Www.naspl.org). With lottery sales alone, it is no shock that the United States earned $78 billion dollars (Www.naspl.org).
Working day and night can seem remarkably stressful; so others might believe engaging in the lottery will effectively change their lives. Although this may be true, the lottery will change lives for the worst. Lotteries are a form of gambling in which you purchase a ticket in hopes of winning a fortune. Henceforth, researching between the two articles, “Addicted to Lotteries” and, “Lotteries Promote Good” both emphasize the contrast behind lotteries. In the final analysis, I believe that lotteries will ultimately devastate and bankrupt lives. In this case, participating in the lottery is a hypnotizing game that lures innocent people to waste their time, money, and effort.