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Distinguishing features of the notable short story of shirley jackson
Examples of foreshadowing
Examples of foreshadowing
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Comparing The Lottery and What A Thought
The short stories I have chosen were "The Lottery" and "What A Thought" by
Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is considered a morbid writer due to the fact that she
writes her stories with the intent to shock her readers into seeing the truth behind human
nature. Her work deals with an evil presence in everyday life. "The Lottery" is a chilling
tale of an everyday town and their annual lottery. It shows how cruel a town can be in
protecting their tradition and rituals and how not even friendship matters. The second,
being found in a collection of 50 short stories found after Jackson's death, shows how
quickly a wife of many years can turn on her husband without warning. Both stories
contained strong imagery and foreshadowing events leading up to the climax. "The
Lottery" was written shortly after World War II, however it is unknown as to when
Jackson wrote "What A Thought".
"The Lottery" and "What A Thought" follow Shirley Jackson's usual scheme of
shock value. Both stories show of how quickly, no matter what length of time people
have coincided together and bonded together, one can turn on another. "The Lottery"
showed of how a small everyday town will do anything to hold their traditional values.
The town believed that they had to make a human sacrifice to the land in order to have
good crops. Therefore every year they held a lottery to find out who the sacrifice would
be. In the story "What A Thought" a husband who would do absolutely anything to keep
his wife happy was brutally killed just because that is the way his wife felt on that day.
These are things that tie in...
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...mmer is associated with life, not death. In "What A Thought" the husband is
almost perfect. Who would ever want to kill the perfect husband? Just moments before
the terrible thoughts the wife was feeling pride for her husband who never did things like
sleep after dinner as most men do. How her husband would do anything for her and yet
without wanting to kill him, she had the longing to do so.
Shirley Jackson definitely can prove a point. She uses great foreshadowing, irony
and symbolism shown in both of these stories. Her style is unique to other writers but
does not differ much within her own writings. "The Lottery" and "What A Thought"
were very good selections for me to chose because they held great meaning behind dark
story lines. I look forward to reading more of her work and researching her character.
In the short story ?Why I want a wife? by Judy Brady, she goes into detail what being a wife is like. The tedious details of day to day activities, the strain and hard work of being a ?good wife?, and the unappreciated service a wife must perform to be accepted by her husband. This story made me feel like, the author
a stressed, hard-working husband and father who puts his family’s needs above his longing for
These women do not know how to act when their husband was not around. They had to be controlled because they do not have control over themselves. If their husbands do not have control over them, they would have been out of control. In both stories, when the husband is out of the picture they are not in their right mind. They always had someone watching over them like they were a child. When they are left alone, they talk to themselves and lose their minds. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the wife is mentally-ill and cannot be left alone. She cannot function in a daily routine. She says that her husband does not treat her like a wife, but instead he treated her like one of his patients. She is only treated that way because she acted like a patient and not like a wife. The only way to help her was to treat her like a patient so that she can get better. In “The Story of the Hour,” the wife wanted her freedom so bad. She is also not in her right mind. She has a heart problem and had to be treated delicately. She also had a controlling hus...
Hi I'm doing my report on the Spanish American War. In the following pages I will be giving information on how and why the war started, major battles, and the results of the war. I will also include stories from people on the battleship Maine.
what we know now as Spanish-America war on April 25, 1898. Was a short war that killed
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." Gioia, Dana and R.S. Gwynn. The Art of the Short Story. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. 390-396.
Every year, the lottery is held, and every year a person is killed. Each villager neglects to acknowledge the unjustness of the lottery and continue to participate because of the tradition it represents in their society. The lottery was a cultural tradition passed down from the very first settlers of the village. It makes up a huge part of the village’s history and culture. The villagers pay recognition to their culture by continuing the tradition of the lottery even though the lottery is not morally right. On page 93 it states, “There was a proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year… There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came to draw from the box…” This quote shows the tribal-like rituals and traditions associated with the lottery. Through the years, some of the rituals of the lottery were lost, but the main elements of the lottery remained the same. The idea behind the lottery was that the ancestors, of the villagers, believed that human sacrifice would bring in good harvest. This led to the development and continuation
... her with joy this sense is only experienced while being confined in her bedroom. And as soon as she leaves her room, the freedom she’d just begun to understand is now taken away from her in an instant. She actually died of sorrow and great disappointment of her husband’s return as he waited at the front door.
The Spanish-American War is important to American history because it established America interest in the Western Hemisphere especially in the tariff of sugar and other supplies coming from the southern and western lands below the equator. The war would eventually establish America in the Western hemisphere as a dominate power and allow for the establishment of future trade and military bases as well as land grabs such as Hawaii.
While the Dharma of Star Wars may seem like it looks to simply compare the similarities between the practice of Buddhism and the Star Wars Universe, it does more than that. This book by Matthew Bortolin not only finds the places in which the two have similarities, but also where some Jedi are, from a Buddhist point of view, imperfect. First and foremost, however, the similarities between the two come in spades. Buddhism has many aspects to it and involves a variety of teachings, but the two central teachings from Buddhism are the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths.
Southern hospitality began directly in the south due to social rules by the high class, mainly farm owners. Hospitality and manners are colloquial almost instinctual to southerners.
...he stopped being the protector and the only rational thinker in the family. In this short story, the men had power over women and they undermined them. The narrator insisted to her husband that she was sick, but he never took her serious instead, he confined her in an isolated place away from home and her child. Eventually both husband and wife loose because, they are trapped in fixed gender roles and could not go against them.
The South is no more the locus of an unmistakable financial framework, trading crude materials and surplus populace to whatever is left of the United States while creating a mixed bag of social and monetary issues for itself. That framework's gone, and no love lost. Some of its belongings still wait, however, and a couple of, for example, a truly biracial populace will be with us for a long time to come.
Wife” has revealed something that all men have and do not take care of them. And Mrs. Angelou