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The lottery shirley jackson theme essay
Shirley jackson the lottery analysis essay
The lottery shirley jackson theme essay
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In stories that both end with innocent people being brutally murdered for the sake of upholding a tradition, there are bound to be similarities. The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross, is the story of a girl who is chosen as a sacrifice in the annual Hunger Games, forced to fight and kill tributes from other districts to survive. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is the story of a woman who is chosen as a sacrifice in the annual lottery, stoned to death by the people in her village. The Hunger Games and The Lottery have similar symbols, characters, and settings.
In The Hunger Games and in The Lottery, there are symbols that come to represent the possibility of change. The mockingjay pin that Katniss Everdeen wears in The Hunger Games becomes
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the main symbol of the rebellion against the Capitol. It also represents hope, and the potential for change in the bleak society that The Hunger Games is set in. It serves as a good luck charm for Katniss, as the pin helps her befriend Rue. This, combined with Katniss’s acts during the 74th Annual Hunger Games, leads to riots in the districts that start a rebellion. The Lottery’s symbol of change is Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Unlike the rebellion, the Adams represent a gradual change and growth that will eventually lead to the end of the lottery. While the characters in The Hunger Games act upon this potential, the characters in The Lottery do not. This causes the story to end with Mr. Adams leading the group that stones Tessie Hutchinson to death, showing the town’s staunch refusal to change tradition. Both Panem and the village are being held back by their traditions, and the mockingjay pin and the Adams represent this. The Hunger Games’ society narrates over the broadcasts of the deaths of tributes like a TV show, and forces tributes to play to a crowd to get sponsors.
High society clearly dissociates from the cruelty of The Hunger Games and doesn’t see the tributes as people, while authority does it to instill hopelessness in the districts. Due to this disconnect from the games, wealthy districts don’t have the fear of being chosen that poorer districts do. Career tributes embody this concept; careers are desensitized to murder and have trained all their lives for the honor of volunteering in The Hunger Games. Unlike The Hunger Games, none of the characters in The Lottery see their sacrifice as honorable. All the citizens consider it bad luck to be chosen, and there are no volunteers. Yet, despite the villagers having the mentality of the poorer districts of Panem about the sacrifice, they’re all cheerful when they gather for the lottery. They all laugh and joke, knowing they’re about to kill an innocent person. Like the career tributes, the villagers are desensitized to death, having to murder one person every year. Nobody considers it wrong to give Tessie’s son a rock to throw when she’s being stoned to death. This shows how the tradition keeps perpetuating itself; children are shown from a young age that stoning a person to death is acceptable, preventing any change in society. Both societies are completely numb to the fact that they’re killing innocent people each
year. The Hunger Games also both have characters that strongly influence the society around them. In The Hunger Games, President Coriolanus Snow is the leader of Panem and has complete control over the districts. Due to the previous rebellion in the districts, he attempts to crush any possibility of another rebellion before it can even take root. While he doesn’t actively participate in the events of The Hunger Games, he has a strong influence on everyone involved. This influence is what leads to the attempts to get Katniss and Peeta killed in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, from having Seneca Crane guide an injured Katniss toward the career tributes up to revoking the rule that two tributes from the same district can both win at the last minute. In The Lottery, Mr. Graves is the postmaster, which gives him authority based on the fact that he controls communication with areas outside the village. Mr. Graves doesn’t have any dialogue in the story, but swears Mr. Summers in when the lottery is about to start, and collects the Hutchinson’s slips of paper when their family is chosen. Swearing Mr. Summers in for the lottery also implies that Mr. Graves has more authority than Mr. Summers. Mr. Graves represents what the lottery leads the person chosen to: the grave. He also foreshadows that the lottery isn’t something that anyone would want to win. While having some clear differences, The Hunger Games and The Lottery have plenty of similarities. Both have settings where the population has become completely desensitized to murder, both have symbols that represent society’s potential to change the tradition, and both have characters that influence the events surrounding the sacrifice and society in general without direct action.
War as seen through the eyes of Ambrose Bierce in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge depicts it as truly gritty. The author successfully sends a message of how death is a part of war, and it is not as noble or glorious as one would think it is. Due to popular media, we have this attitude that the protagonist is going to go down in a blaze of glory, and while it may be true for some, it is not like that for everyone. War is rough, dark, and gritty but no one ever wants to talk about those parts of war because it would ruin the fantasy of it.
People within communities have a large responsibility to one another. Sometimes, however, that responsibility and respect seem to fade, as in “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson, and “The Masque of the Red Death”, Edgar Allan Poe. Both of these stories describe settings in which communities fell apart either briefly or all together.
Several generations have gone through some type of an unfair law that they had to obey, for example, in past generations African Americans were enslaved, but more presently the lack of rights the LGBT members have with marriage. This can relate to the stories “Antigone” and “The Lottery” because the characters in each story went through unfair tragedies. The laws in each of these stories are different, but actually very similar as shown by the end result.
A common phrase used in courts is that someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” Through the plot’s of “The Lottery” and The Crucible, this idea of people being innocent until guilty is shown, however, the part of this phrase about proving that guilt is conveniently left out. Of course, both stories took place in a time in which the villagers felt no need for there to be any kind of trial or reasoning for someone’s death. Rather, the persecutions that occured in these stories took place to ensure that barbaric tendencies did not spread among the people within their villages. This idea of keeping people from being barbaric or evil enforces the idea that perhaps people truly think that the people who choose the marked paper are really deserving
The author Suzanne Collins demonstrates this when she portrays the Career tributes as “districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people [Career tributes] are eager to risk their lives” (Collins 22). The people of the Career districts trained their whole for the chance and opportunity to take part in the Hunger Games based on the false reality of what they see on the television. The false reality that the television provides conceals the viewers from learning the true reality/ harshness of the Hunger Games and influences people such as the Career tributes to actually pursue their goal of taking part in this dangerous battle. The deception of the television in the novel, Hunger Games, influences and manipulates the way some people wish to lead their lives. Suzanne Collins
It would be hard to think people being killed and people without morals would be similar, but The Lord of the Flies and "The Lottery" have a lot of differences and that is what makes them interesting. William Golding and Shirley Jackson wrote some similar stories. However, some differences between The Lord of the Flies and The Lottery are the motives for persecuting someone, the setting and the way people are killed.
The author does not have much time to make a point like in a novel, so they must implore the use of symbols. There are several symbols in “The Lottery.” The first example is in the characters of the story. The names and personalities that Jackson chose for these specific characters have more to them than what meets the eye. Mr. Summers, “a round-faced, jovial man,” is the face of the lottery (Jackson 260). He is cheerful and takes the actions he must organize rather lightly, considering he is organizing the death of a neighbor. His assistant, Mr. Graves, is quiet and stands to the side. Readers can quickly see the contrast in names and actions that Jackson is trying to portray. In “Jackson’s ‘The Lottery,’” Amy Griffin describes the symbolism on a deeper level. She
When selecting notes, one can notice that the adults all seem spiteful towards people trying to avoid the system that they believe permits them viable harvests (394). This is because their criticism is reinforced by a decreased probability of selection which can then be self-justified as a false belief that they will benefit from their sacrifice (394). And, as the people get older, they accrue resentment toward younger people due to the fact that it was them that took the statistical sacrifice for so many years. Old Man Warner subtly terrorizes the village with threats that civilization will turn back to the caveman era in the absence of the lottery (393). When other village people address the thought that the lottery may actually be useless, he harshly rejects these thoughts either through his own self-reinforced spite against future generations having it better than he did, or through a less likely adamant belief of the tradition (393). Either way, the village is perpetually stuck in a cycle where the older people in the village refuse to allow the tradition to be questioned or removed, and thus enable the stoning to partake and be ingrained in future
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
In the stories of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, both authors deliver the dangers of blindly following tradition that can lead to death, fear and no advancement in society. In “The Lottery” their tradition is to kill a person that is randomly chosen by using a lottery. To compare, in “The Hunger Games” children are also picked out of a lottery from each district and if they are chosen, they need to fight against each other to death. Both stories share a tradition of cruel and murderous behavior but they have a slight difference in tradition.
In "The Lottery" Shirley Jackson fills her story with many literary elements to mask the evil. The story demonstrates how it is in human nature to blindly follow traditions. Even if the people have no idea why they follow.
“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.
Two thought provoking short stories, The Lottery by Richard Connell and The Most Dangerous Game by Shirley Jackson provide the authors’ outlooks on society and human behavior. At first view one might find it difficult to compare these literary works, written in different eras, side by side. However these seemingly unrelated stories share multiple interworking components. With further reading you can identify common aspects of both stories. Take for example the theme, literary devices, and figurative language. These elements help to distinguish the stories and compare them to each other.
“The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” are two short stories that share core and deep meanings. They both have a frightening background and they both seem to start with happy and jolly leads. These two stories will be compared in an analytical and perspective manner. Though a reader can see similarities in the two stories, as they both seem to hold deep hidden meanings behind them, the stories “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” are more alike in their viewings, concepts, and traditions.
Death can come in many ways. It can be sudden, or over a strenuous period of time. It can seem random, but sometimes is planned and thought out. There are just about as many ways to deal with death, as there are ways to die. While both The lottery and The Story of an Hour explore the theme of death and grief, The lottery tells a tale of the sacrificial death for a community (necessary, no grief) while The Story of an Hour depicts the natural death of a loved one (grief, but, later, revelation) and how we eventually come to terms with it.