The Influence Of Society In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, is far from boring. It starts off at what seems to be a nice, sunny, summer day and families are in the time square. First we see that children are playing picking up stones and collecting them, putting them in piles. Then we see the men looking about and talking among themselves and women coming along to stand with husbands. By this time, one would think that the lottery is a great thing, it was being conducted by Mr. Summers who was in charge of many activities in the village. With Mr. Summers has a black box and Mr. Graves who has a three-legged stool. Soon all head of households had selected a piece of paper and all of the villagers seemed anxious, waiting to see who had won. The Hutchinson had drawn that

What influenced Shirley Jackson to write this piece of work? Also how did the people of the time feel about it? “The Lottery” was written in 1948, WWII had just ended. Also it was the great depression had ended as well. This gave society sort of an individualism mindset, survival of the fittest mentality. (Goodwin) Jackson portrays this in the story when the characters do not seem to have a problem with the lottery until it hits close to home. As long as it was not them who were picked it was just a tradition. As soon as they are picked, like Tessie it is “unfair”. Jackson also shows the sense of male dominance over the female family members in this time. In this time in age, women were treated as though inferior to men, being expected to stay home and take care of the family. Another issue is that Jackson believed people were very inhumane towards one another. During the war there were acts committed that horrified the nation such as the holocaust and the bombings.(Goodwin) Jackson depicts this perception inhumane acts very well especially in the end, when the villagers are stoning Tessie a woman whom they have known for year to death. They did not stone her because she did anything wrong, they stoned her because it was simply

Though it ended abruptly, it was full of symbolism, irony and plot twists. I am sure many people of her time found the story inappropriate. Shirley Jackson showed many people how cruel humans can be and how blind we are when it comes to traditions. In this short story you see fear, lack of free will, conformity and the will to