Q: What have you seen about the human condition through the texts you have studied? The human condition has a constantly changing complexion driven by the transience of human life and the contradictory nature of individual actions and human ideals. Gwen Harwood’s “Father and Child” and “Mother who gave me life,” and Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” (1998), explore the fluid and contrasting nature of the human condition. Harwood portrays the transience of life in “Mother who gave me life” while depicting the inescapable truth of mortality in “Father and Child,” illustrating the ever changing complexion of the human experience. Whereas, Jackson examines the capability of all humans to be violent and cruel while questioning whether …show more content…
such tendencies can be masked by a constrictive society’s heartless ideals. Harwood reflects on the brevity of life in her poem and consolidates this concept of mortality as the basis of the human condition, “Mother who gave me life”, an elegy that reflects on her mother’s life. She opens the poem directly addressing her mother, “Forgive me the wisdom/I would not learn from you”, in which her use of a subjunctive mood conveys the sense of regret Harwood carries for not learning enough from her mother during her life. This illustrates the difficulty in knowledge passing from one generation to another due to the fleetingness of time, and subsequently portraying the impermanence of life as a foundation of the human experience. Furthermore, the allusion to Halley’s Comet in “I prayed you would live to see/Halley’s Comet a second time,” reinforces the transience of the human condition as it highlights that in the scale of a divine object such as a comet our lives are almost insignificant. Furthermore, the use of shifting verb tenses in the poem as seen in the change from "I walk/on earth..." to "I prayed you would..." symbolises the swiftness between the past and present subsequently, illustrating the fragility of the human condition. Harwood’s lament of the fleetingness of her mother’s life, illustrates the fluidity of the human experience as it highlights how quickly one’s lifetime can pass and hence consolidates this concept of mortality at the crux of the human condition. In her poem, “Father and Child”, Gwen Harwood also depicts the impermanence of life as a central aspect of the human complexion however by exploring the difficulty in accepting the fact that death is an unavoidable prospect. She utilises a diptych structure which portrays the contrast between a child’s naive image of death and the increasingly mature understanding they obtain as they transition into adulthood, highlighting this maturation transformation of accepting the mortality of life as a central concept of the human condition. This is highlighted in ‘I Barn Owl’, the first part of the poem, where the use of emotive language, “I watched, afraid/ …, a lonely child who believed death clean/ and final, not this obscene,” which emphasises the confronting nature of death for a child which is further accentuated through the use of enjambment which conveys the narrator’s distress. Contrastingly, ‘II Nightfall’, the second part of the poem, the symbolism of life as a “marvellous journey” that comes to an end when “night and day are one” reflects the narrator’s more refined and mature understanding of mortality. Furthermore the reference to the “child once quick/to mischief, grown to learn/what sorrows,…/no words, no tears can mend” reaffirms the change in the narrator’s perspective on death through the juxtaposition of innocent qualities such as “mischief”, with more negative emotions associated with adulthood such as “sorrows”. The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates this dynamic transition and acceptance of mortality as we grow older is a universal aspect of the human condition. Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” illustrates that cruelty and violence are primitive characteristics of all humans through its depiction of a seemingly ordinary town that engages in surprisingly dystopian traditions.
The complexity of human nature is illustrated through a regular community that partakes in heartless violence as seen when “a stone” hits Tessie Hutchison “on the side of the head” as she screams for mercy which highlights murder and violence is not entirely in contrast to socially accepted behaviour. This is further emphasised through the fact that “children had stones” which highlights that violence is an intrinsic aspect of the human condition and can be normalised by society’s blind following of an outdated and immoral tradition. Jackson highlights that the selfish nature of human allows them to ignore the immorality of certain traditions as long as they are not harmed. This illustrate through the juxtaposition of Tessie Hutchison’s desperate tone as she begs to be spared, “it isn’t fair, it isn’t right” to the condescending tone of the villagers that remind Tessie “all of us took the same chance”, from their relative position of security as their names have not been drawn. The fact that no one in the town speaks out against the lottery unless their own name is drawn, serves to illustrate that a conformist society’s inhuman and archaic customs can conceal human’s inherent capabilities to inflict pain on one another. Hence, Jackson explores humans’ capability to be cruel and selfish which contradict society’s ideals to be selfless and kind, revealing the conflicting components of the human
condition. Gwen Harwood’s poems’ “Father and Child” and “Mother who gave me life” explores the fluidity of time and human’s changing perspectives on death as they struggle to come to terms with its inevitability, revealing the constantly changing nature of the human condition. While Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” reveals the innate tendencies for humans to be violent when protected by society’s cruel traditions, illustrating the contradictory nature of common facets of individual’s actions to be cruel and selfish and human’s ideals to be kind and selfless.
Screaming, yelling, and screeching emerge from Tessi Hutchinson, but the town remains hushed as they continue to cast their stones. Reasonably Tessi appears as the victim, but the definite victim is the town. This town, populated by rational people, stones an innocent woman because of a lottery. To make matters worse, no one in the town fathoms why they exterminate a guiltless citizen every June. The town’s inexplicable behavior derives from following an ancient, ludicrous tradition. With the omission of one man, no one in the community comprehends the tradition. In the case of “The Lottery,” the town slays an irreproachable victim each year because of a ritual. Shirley Jackson exposes the dangers of aimlessly following a tradition in “The Lottery.” Jackson not only questions the problem, but through thorough evaluation she an deciphers the problem as well.
In Shirley Jackson’s short story the Lottery and Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, there are a few aspects of a similar nature that attempt to tackle the nature essence of the human condition. Both short stories respectively portray two similar types of foreshadowing where one is random the other is premeditated, which leads these stories to their very surprising dramatic climax that is held until the end of each story. I believe that these important variables of both stories have a strong influence on the reader’s objectification regarding the way each story presents the idea of the human condition.
We can transform our life by altering our thinking process, and the stories by Shirley Jackson and Chris Abani emphasize on changing the thought. Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery”, conveys a great ironic tradition of a certain American community at some time in history, probably not that old. Similarly, “The Lottery” by Chris Abani also explores a similar tragic story about a loss of a life, and presents the life and survival as a lottery, which is never certain. In these regards, both these stories express a common theme of a traditional belief and a tragic end of a life but in a very contrasting fashion and settings.
In the story, The Lottery, there are many signs of duality of human nature. Many of the characters appear to be affected by the lottery at first, but towards the end their feelings start to change. Tessie, Mr.Summers, and Mrs.Delacroix all show two sides of humanity and they all generally appear to be good natured people, but are they really?
Tradition is huge in small towns and families and allows for unity through shared values, stories, and goals from one generation to the next. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” carries that theme of tradition. The story follows a small town that performs the tradition of holding an annual lottery in which the winner gets stoned to death. It (tradition) is valued amongst human societies around the world, but the refusal of the villagers in “The Lottery” to let go of a terrifying long-lasting tradition suggests the negative consequences of blindly following these traditions such as violence and hypocrisy.
The works of Shirley Jackson tend to the macabre because she typically unveils the hidden side of human nature in her short stories and novels. She typically explores the darker side of human nature. Her themes are wide-ranging and border on the surreal though they usually portray everyday, ordinary people. Her endings are often not a resolution but rather a question pertaining to society and individuality that the reader must ask himself or herself. Jackson's normal characters often are in possession of an abnormal psyche. Children are portrayed as blank slates ready to learn the ways of the world from society. However, adults have a hidden side already formed and lurking beneath the perceived normality of the established social order. We see this best in Jackson's most famous short story, The Lottery. Jackson's uses many elements of fiction to demonstrate how human nature can become desensitized to the point of mob murder of a member of their own community. One of the ways she does this is through character. While the shocking reason behind the lottery and the gruesome prize for its winner are not received until the ending, the characters come back to haunt us for their desensitized behavior earlier in the story. For example, the children in the beginning of the story innocently gather stones as normal children might, yet their relish in doing so becomes macabre once we find out the purpose for which that are collecting them "Bobby Martin hard already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroy...eventually made a great pile of stones in one ...
“The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson in 1948, is a provoking piece of literature about a town that continues a tradition of stoning, despite not know why the ritual started in the first place. As Jackson sets the scene, the villagers seem ordinary; but seeing that winning the lottery is fatal, the villagers are then viewed as murders by the reader. Disagreeing with the results of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson is exposed to an external conflict between herself and the town. Annually on June 27th, the villagers gather to participate in the lottery. Every head of household, archetypally male, draws for the fate of their family, but Tessie protests as she receives her prize of a stoning after winning the lottery. Jackson uses different symbols – symbolic characters, symbolic acts, and allegories – to develop a central theme: the
Why would a civilized and peaceful town would ever suggest the horrifying acts of violence can take place anywhere at anytime and the most ordinary people can commit them. Jackson's fiction is noted for exploring incongruities in everyday life, and “The Lottery”, perhaps her most exemplary work in this respect, examines humanity's capacity for evil within a contemporary, familiar, American setting. Noting that the story’s characters, physical environment, and even its climactic action lacks significant individuating detail, most critics view “The Lottery.” As a modern-day parable or fable, which obliquely addresses a variety of themes, including the dark side of human nature, the danger of ritualized behavior, and the potential for cruelty when the individual submits to the mass will. Shirley Jackson also addresses cruelty by the citizen’s refusal to stand up and oppose “The Lottery.” Violence and cruelty is a major theme in “The Lottery.”
Development of society is based on the fluctuation of people’s mindsets. As people grow and cultural advancements are made, mindsets change and customs become abnormal. “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, deals with the customs of one village during one generation. Although it is a fictional expression, inside the story lays an underlying truth that Jackson tried to share with her neighbors about the culture and society they were living in. Women and men had long been unequal. Based on the cultural norms in this story, social customs emphasized the male figure and minimized the role of women. Analyzing the story from a gender-stereotyped angle clarifies what Jackson was telling her readers about the social order during that time.
In Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," what appears to be an ordinary day in a small town takes an evil turn when a woman is stoned to death after "winning" the town lottery. The lottery in this story reflects an old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order to encourage the growth of crops. But this story is not about the past, for through the actions of the town, Jackson shows us many of the social ills that exist in our own lives.
“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” (Twain). The Lottery begins during the summer. A small, seemingly normal, town is gathering to throw the annual “Lottery”. In the end, the townspeople—children included—gather around and stone the winner to death, simply because it was tradition. The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective. “I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). As humans develop as a race, their practices should develop with them. Shirley Jackson develops the theme that blindly following traditions is dangerous in her short story “The Lottery” through the use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony.
Family relationsips are challenged in a great number of ways that become broken. Family relations are challenged in the two stories. The Lottery and the Crash. The families in both stories are close up until a certain point. The lottery is a very intense story as the Lottery isnt actually what a may seem, you dont actually win a lottery in a good way. Family gets picked and one of the members in the family gets stoned to death as they pick a letter with a black dot. In the crash racism effects the family relations
“The Lottery” is a story which shows the complexity and capability of human behavior. Something immoral, like stoning a person to death once a year, is a normal occurrence. The main character, Tessie Hutchinson, is the victim of the lottery. Tessie is a character with a number of seemingly good characteristics, yet her surrounding culture rejects these characteristics. The majority of the people in the village has opposite attitudes and beliefs in comparison to Tessie’s. These attitudes and beliefs reflect her personal desires which quickly struggle against the culture’s expectations. Tessie is unlike the other villagers; she is initially indifferent to the lottery indicating her desires are unrelated to the lottery. Upon winning the lottery, Tessie changes and her personal desires to survive and reject the lottery emerge in her selfishness and outspoken personality. These struggles against the village’s expectations are shown through the culture’s emphasis on tradition and small town ties.
In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the author is able to entertain and enlighten the readers. The interesting and profound topic of the story is partly the reason for drawing the readers in; however, the clever characterization of Tessie and the anonymous setting help to make the story more relatable as well as force the readers to feel sympathy for the characters. Although a story about a town devouring a member of its community is horrifying, there is a large meaning. Jackson effectively uses “The Lottery” to warn the readers of the dangers of the group. Shirley Jackson describes the characters in “The Lottery” in a way that readers can relate to each of them in some way, yet she makes one character stand out from the start of the story.
"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson that was published in 1948 and gave a good example of the definition of the term sociological theory. This theory is a set of ideas on how people behave and how institutions operate. The analysis of this short story and the of the work of Emile Durkheim shows the relationship of the two in the field of Sociology. There are many well defined intertwining theories that Durkheim gave to society that are also included in "The Lottery". Solidarity is the theory that will be analyzed.