The Believability Of Life In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

750 Words2 Pages

In “The Lottery,” Jackson uses the country setting of the town to increase the believability of the events that unfold in the story. In the short story he employs the small population, remote location, and rigid traditions of the town boister the possibility of the events occuring.
In the village, there are “only about three hundred people” meaning the “whole lottery took less than two days.” The size of the town made the process of a lottery quick and easy. It was convenient for the people, so much so that they “got home for noon dinner.” If it took so little time out of their mundane days and gave the people a form of entertainment, then it did not seem so bad that a life was being lost. The casual nature of the lottery is demonstrated by Mrs. Hutchinson’s “laughing” as she joined the crowd. She continues her casual demeanor by …show more content…

A large cosmopolitan city is characterized by a buzzing trade, diverse people groups, and nascent ideas, but a small town would lack these components, thus increasing the probability of their ideas being outdated and their creative thoughts becoming stagnant. Since the people have been doing the lottery in the same way since before “the oldest man in the town was born,” and they have had no newcomers besides babies raised to adulthood in the same traditions, it is feasible to think that this village has a lottery each year for the sake of tradition. Although much of the pompous around the lottery has been “forgotten or discarded,” Old Man Warner reminds the villagers of the saying “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” Unconsciously, the villagers may have taken this adage to heart and connected the tradition of the lottery to their crops success. If so, the process of the lottery would become integral to the town, because a small town unconnected with surrounding towns cannot survive without a fruitful

Open Document