Society’s views on how people should act and look can impact a person’s life and send them down a dark road. People can be led to believe that they have immunity over others and are granted safety at all times. Sometimes people become overly used to certain events happening and when the pattern ends, they become upset. Other times, society deems certain acts normal when they are truly terrible. The lives of both Tessie in “The Lottery” and the man in “Identities” are influenced by society’s unrealistic expectations. People tend to assume that they will be safe in their surroundings because of who they are or how they look. In “Identities” the protagonist believes that he will be safe even in a different town because of the way he looks. …show more content…
In “Identities”, the man was most likely a rich white man so he most likely wouldn’t have had problems with the police and they probably never looked twice at him in a store or outside on the street. (Insert a sentence about identities). All the years that Tessie’s family may have been in the lottery, they have never been chosen so she assumes that they won’t this year and everything will be all good. As soon as Tessie’s husband Bill is chosen, she goes off saying “I think we ought to start over, I tell you it wasn’t fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose” (Jackson, page 6). That quote has irony with it since Tessie was the one who forced Bill to go faster, no one else. People can tend to get into the habit of doing certain …show more content…
The town in “The Lottery” is told that it is okay to proceed with this cruel act every year by society. It is believed it keeps them civilized. People in other towns started to realize this wasn’t okay but Warner thought it was “nothing but trouble in that” Old Man Warner said stoutly “pack of young fools” (Jackson, page 5). In “Identities”, everyone seems to make judgmental decisions that result in people getting hurt. The policeman judges the man and from one small action he seems to think it is a gun because of how he looks that day and ends up killing an innocent man, “because he has been trained to see an unshaven man in blue jeans as a potential thief” he assumes the worst and judges him based off appearances. Assumptions should never be made because a person could think one thing and it could end up completely
Tradition is a central theme in Shirley Jackon's short story The Lottery. Images such as the black box and characters such as Old Man Warner, Mrs. Adams, and Mrs. Hutchinson display to the reader not only the tenacity with which the townspeople cling to the tradition of the lottery, but also the wavering support of it by others. In just a few pages, Jackson manages to examine the sometimes long forgotten purpose of rituals, as well as the inevitable questioning of the necessity for such customs.
Shirley Jacksons short story The lottery and Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Harrison Bergeron are both dystopian texts. They demonstrate a way of life that violates our sense or rightfulness but are found acceptable and ordinary to the characters. A dystopian world is often propagandized as being a utopia and has a futuristic totalitarian or authoritarian government that exerts complete control over the public which results in the loss of individuality and freedom. Even though both texts have entirely dissimilar concepts the reader can still recognise the depraved and immoral lives the characters believe are essential to their way of life. The societies portrayed in both texts are illusions of utopian worlds, even though the reader views the characters lifestyle to be revolting, dehumanized and sickening. The authors also caution the readers of the extreme dangers associated with the blind acceptance of their lifestyle just because of tradition and society’s acceptance.
To stand firm in ones beliefs is a difficult task. It takes a strong-minded person with boldness to stand for what he or she believes in. The possible consequence for doing so is isolation, humiliation or the success of changing ones view. Given that standing up for oneself makes the person vulnerable, out of fear, many suppress their ideas and settle for the beliefs of others. In The Lottery, The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas and The Namesake, the characters struggled with the decision to conform to society or go against social norms to defend their morals.
Compare and Contrast! Well, you use it on a daily right? The stories “The Lottery” and “The Landlady” are two stories that you can compare and contrast. Some examples of comparisons are that both of the stories use violence, and that they both end with a plot twist no one was expecting. One example of a contrast in both of these stories is that they use their imagery differently. How are these stories alike and how are they different?
As old man Warner said, "There 's always been a lottery” (Jackson 4). This shows that the villagers have a lack of ability to change over time. No person in the town would stand up and say that this violent ritual was absurd, making them all out to be hypocrites just as Tessie was. Instead of doing so, one villager, Mr. Adams, comments that other towns around them were giving up the lottery, as if to suggest their town should do so as well. In reply old man Warner said, "Pack of crazy fools” (Jackson 4), and then, "Listening to the young folks, nothings good enough for them” (Jackson 4). Old man Warner can in a sense be seen as a symbol of the town and their lack of change. He disapproves of anything that isn’t what he views as a traditional social practice. Old man Warner’s quick defense of the lottery implies that he sees change as an attack on himself and his beliefs. Blindly following tradition can cause the rejection of non-conformity in a society, even those traditions that are full of
An individual’s identity is determined by how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves. However, its seems as if society’s opinion of an individual has taken precedence over an individual's own judgement. This phenomena has a great effect on the decisions people make. When Olivia mistakenly marries Sebastian and ...
...Boyarin overcome his fear of being labeled by the society by sticking up to his morals and ethics. This shows that an individual’s fear of being labeled by the society can depend on the situations they face which shape their strategies of personal identity.
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 ...
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.
Sometimes people follow traditions or customs and don’t remember or ask why. Often, if someone is asked why they do something, they’ll respond with it’s just something they’ve always done. In the short story “The Lottery”, the townspeople are all victims of blind obedience. On the same day every year, they celebrate the same event, for over seventy-five years now. They don’t even question why they do it. When someone is so used to a pattern of doing things, they might forget why they started in the first place, but don’t make a move to stop.
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.
The biggest manifestation of this negative social phenomenon is the tragic event in Shawshank, which serves as a base for the plot: the murder of the main character’s wife and her lover. It is obvious that Andy Dufresne, the protagonist, is innocent, but the court does not decide in his favor. In other words, the system of justice makes a sorrowful mistake and ruins a man’s life. This shows how the governmental machine is able to have a profound negative influence on an individual (Dorling 13). I can relate a similar, less severe personal experience. Once I was accused of breaking a window in the neighborhood. I did not do it, but I could not convince my parents of the truth. We had to buy a new window and I was negatively looked on by others, though the fault was not mine. At certain points, I could clearly see myself in the character of Andy Dufresne. Indeed, it is very terrible and unjust when a person is accused of what one has not done, and is puni...
"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.
There are some people who will never believe anything from what they think to be true. In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the small town of villagers have a day each year where they sacrifice one human amongst them, just because they have never imagined a time in their culture when they did not do such a thing. This impairs each characters’ judgment so that concepts that would normally be taken for wrong are somehow taken for right. It affects the town’s ability to grow because they cannot accept new ideas within their community. Therefore, “The Lottery” is an example of what happens when society can only distinguish two classes, specifically the working class and the wealthy leader class, which in this case would be an example