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Analysis of shirley jacksons the lottery
What is the character analysis of the lottery by shirley jackson
Analysis of shirley jacksons the lottery
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The ethical and moral decisions made by people are what mold our future, but it is when these decisions are made without careful consideration that people tend lead themselves down a path of destruction. In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Joseph Whitehill's "The Day of the Last Rock Fight" the ethical and moral decisions made by the character in the stories are conducted without proper thought. They choose to do these dreadful acts based on things such as blindly following tradition or even out of anger and as a result end up paying the price.
Whitehill and Jackson both include people who make decisions without fully understanding the consequences that come with it. In Jackson's story, the decisions made by the villagers to hold an annual lottery in which people end up dead, is something they follow blindly without considering the pointless harm it does. Tessie Hutchinson willingly partakes in the lottery knowing the dangers that lie ahead and seems to not worry about it. When she is chosen she exclaims, "It wasn't fair", and begins to beg the crowd to let them do it over and t...
Humans are capable of both good and bad things. Many people are selfish and willing to go to any lengths to get what they want, even if it means they could hurt someone or destroy their life. Shirley Jackson and Chris Abani 's stories “The Lottery” demonstrates the cruelty humans are capable of by showing the awful things people are willing to do to others.
Shirley Jackson wrote many books in her life, but she was well known by people for her story “The Lottery” (Hicks). “The Lottery” was published on June 28, 1948, in the New Yorker magazine (Schilb). The story sets in the morning of June 27th in a small town. The townspeople gather in the square to conduct their annual tradition, the Lottery. The winner of the lottery will stoned to death by the society. Although there is no main character in the story, the story develops within other important elements. There are some important elements of the story that develop the theme of the story: narrator and its point of view, symbolism, and main conflict. The story “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, argues practicing a tradition without understanding the meaning of the practice is meaningless and dangerous.
In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the theme of the story is dramatically illustrated by Jackson’s unique tone. Once a year the villagers gather together in the central square for the lottery. The villagers await the arrival of Mr. Summers and the black box. Within the black box are folded slips of paper, one piece having a black dot on it. All the villagers then draw a piece of paper out of the box. Whoever gets the paper with the black dot wins. Tessie Hutchinson wins the lottery! Everyone then closes in on her and stones her to death. Tessie Hutchinson believes it is not fair because she was picked. The villagers do not know why the lottery continues to exist. All they know is that it is a tradition they are not willing to abandon. In “The Lottery,” Jackson portrays three main themes including tradition, treason, and violence.
Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', is a story that is filled with symbolism. The author uses symbolism to help her represent human nature as tainted, no matter how pure one thinks of himself or herself, or how pure their environment may seem to be. The story is very effective in raising many questions about the pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. 'The Lottery' clearly expresses Jackson's feelings concerning mankind?s evil nature hiding behind traditions and rituals. She shows how coldness and lack of compassion in people can exhibit in situations regarding tradition and values. Jackson presents the theme of this short story with a major use of symbolism. Symbolism shows throughout the setting of 'The Lottery,' the objects, the peoples actions, and even in the time and the names of the lucky contestants.
Many authors have a particular style that is threaded through all of their work. This is the case with the short stories “The Lottery” and “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson. The stories themselves are very different, but there are many common threads between the two. The two stories share a theme, action for the greater good. Both stories have events that the person or people committing the action believe must happen. These actions may harm others, but it is for the betterment of the world in their opinion. Jackson uses similar settings, well thought out symbolism, and sudden plot twists in both stories to support the theme of action for the greater good.
Almost every person in the world holds a set of traditions which have been established and practiced for a long period of time. However, some traditions often cause us to not see the rationality despite of the destructive nature it may have. In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, a sacrifice of one’s life becomes the “jackpot” of an annual event held in a small town. This society’s traditions have caused the people to do away with their rational thoughts and the values of their lives as they have become so stuck in their own cultural beliefs.
Humans will always make mistakes. It is important that we learn from them and avoid making more in the future. In The Lottery, an old town tradition forces the town residents to sacrifice the person whose name is chosen from the black box. In Hills like White Elephants, a man and his wife discuss whether or not the woman should get an abortion. Both of these short stories lead to the idea that old traditions aren’t always right. Was bringing Africans to America to be slaves a just policy? Was kicking Indians off of their homeland to walk the Trail of Tears right? Both The Lottery and Hills like White Elephants look at some of man’s wrongs and present some solutions on how to fix them.
The author of “The Lottery” wrote this story “to shock the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson 211). This story reflects human behavior in society to show how although rules, laws or traditions do not make sense, people follow them. Throughout the story the three main symbols of how people blindly follow senseless traditions were the lottery itself, the color black, and the hesitation that people had towards the prize.
“If you choose not to decide, you have still made a choice.” --Blaise Pascal. This quote means when you give up the chance to make the decision, you 've already make the decision to stand aside indifferently, and trying to ignore the fact that you could 've done something better with that. This related to her most famous story is "The Lottery" (1948), the time period which is not long after the Great Depression and World War II. These two events changed the mentality of the whole society, people started the idea of "man for himself", in order to survive in the community. This works a straightforward manner to metaphor human cruelty and ignorance. Shirley Jackson (1919 -1965), an American novelist and short story writer. The theme of most
First off, I would like to congratulate Richard Connell and Shirley Jackson on a well-rounded short story. These fiction stories were amazing, and gave the audience food-for-thought as they concluded. The purpose of this paper will be the comparing and contrasting of two short stories previously read and interpreted by the writer. The two stories chosen were “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. These two stories seem to have nothing in common, as they have two separate meanings in two separate eras. However, the moral of each story draws similarity, the aut...
In her story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson attacks social conformity and cultural mindlessness. Even though stoning someone to death is incredibly inhumane, the townsfolk still carry on tradition in fear of what might happen if the lottery was abolished. Also, the one person who rises against the lottery, Mrs. Hutchinson, ends up being the one who gets the “honor” of winning the lottery, which indirectly shows that those who cry out against conformity get punished, proving that maybe conformity is the only chance people have at survival and safety.
To me, this story tells says a lot about how people are today how we follower what we are told and don’t ask questions. Even if it leads us to do horrendous things. In this story, we see this in the fact that the people are willing to go through with this horrible lottery even though they seem like nice people. They do not seem like people who would take part in such a horrible act. But tradition tells them they should kill one of your friends or family every June and so they do it without a doubt in their mind. It teaches how it is our nature to need traditions, rules, and leadership, yet, how sometimes this may make us blind as a bat to what for certain it is that we could end up potentially following the wrong
All in all, the author of the short story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson is using the story to infer that humans can do terribly harmful acts, to the point of actually destroying each other at any given time or place if they have been made to believe it is truly the correct thing to do. Jackson uses the elements of the story, such as the setting, characters, and plot, to do this. She also basically criticizes the human race overall, and finally she is able to write the story with events of World War II in mind. Humans really can do horrifically amazing things when they are led to do them.
In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, characters tend to show two opposing sides of humanity when faced with the lottery. This event is a tradition which takes place once a year where the town draws pieces of paper until a single person is chosen to be stoned as a sacrifice for good harvest. Characters who show a more obvious indication of the two sides are Tessie Hutchinson and Mr. Summers. These characters represent a good side and a more evil side. Maybe blindly following a tradition isn’t always the best option.
Through the use of sacrificing their people and condemning them under unjust laws, civilizations such as the Aztecs and Babylonians have turned family members against one another and caused the death and suffering of innocents. Jackson alludes to these atrocities in “The Lottery” by illustrating how blindly following tradition is detrimental to the advancement of society, which she emphasizes by allowing the reader to feel Tessie’s pain when she is betrayed by her family, using her desperate