Summary of The Lottery

The short story that this paper will look at is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. It was first published in The New Yorker on 26 June 1948. It is one of the most famous short stories in the history of United States literature history. This paper is a summary of the story from my point of view. The Lottery is a work of fiction that demonstrates rebellion and conformity while insinuating that a lottery is part of a ritualistic ceremony. The author was born in 1919. She struggled with depression throughout her life. She married Edgar Hyman, with whom she had four children. Throughout her marriage, Jackson maintained a writing career, which led to four other novels.

The short story focuses on a certain village during a day considered its lottery holiday. The aim of the lottery is to ensure that there is enough rain so that the village can have good corn crop in the month of June. The story revolves around some misguided beliefs saying that the villagers would have good crops in the next year should they sacrifice one of their people. Most villagers believe that if they fail to make the sacrifice, they would not have good crops, and would experience challenging times.

The story makes readers believe that 27 June is just like any normal day in the village. The lottery takes less than two hours. It begins at ten in the morning so that it would end early, as a way of allowing the villagers enough time to get home for noon dinner. The event comes across as a brief event that should not disrupt other activities during the day. One event that seems essential to the village is the noon dinner. This is because it ends early so that people can get home in time for the meal. During the dinner, three boys collect some rocks. However, this does n...

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... announced the names of those who had won in the lottery.

In conclusion, I can say that the personal struggles, such as depression that the author experienced in her life, played a role in her style of writing. Most of her works lead the readers to ominous endings, and some contain dark humor. The theme that the short story brings out is that one should not believe everything that he or she hears. The villagers had always performed the ritual of picking other villagers because they owned an old black box that had moved from one generation to another. They have parts of the ritual that they do not remember, and others that they remember. In addition, they have changed the ritual in such a way that it does not operate the way it did in the earlier days. However, because villagers believed in stories they had heard in the past, they were afraid of stopping the ritual.