The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Lessons Essay

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Recommended: Discuss Jackson's use of irony in "The Lottery"

In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery,” there is an old fashioned town. Every year, in June, the town participates in a tradition where they draw and someone gets stoned. Whenever the person is chosen, everyone, including their family, stones that person even if they don’t want to. Even though Shirley is a laid back writer and it’s a short story, you can learn many lessons from, “The Lottery.” The three major lessons and themes are about social conformity, tradition, and fake friends. Of the three, social conformity appears in almost the entire story. You can learn from this story that social conformity is a shield that blinds the people from the truth. “The Lottery,” starts out with the villagers gathering in the town square. To anyone else, it might be a dreaded day, but to these people, it was a normal June 27. They all get up and show up like it is a normal day. None of them want to be there, but because they’re convinced tradition it what’s best, they show up to their possible death. “They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled …show more content…

Summers said.’ Let’s finish quickly.’” This is one of the many examples of them clearly not wanting to do the lottery. They all just want to get this over with and go on with their day like it is any other day. You can tell that no one wants to do this, but they think they have to because it’s a tradition. “All the children had stones. Someone handed Little Davy some little pebbles.” Again, another example of how horrible the lottery really is. They make Tessie’s own family kill her, that is how badly they are blinded by social conformity. They can’t even realize how senseless and horrible they are being by making families and friends turn on each other and kill each other. In some ways, social conformity is worse than the lottery itself. Shirley Jackson shows many examples of how social conformity makes you do horrible things without

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