The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Sacrifice Essay

Human sacrifice is a practice that has been going on since the beginning of time. Different cultures have done it for various reasons, such as worship or the desire for fortune, and whether morality was considered in these practices is something we may never know. In the story The Lottery, written in 1948 by Shirley Jackson, people in a village sacrifice one person at random each year because they believe that it helps them with their crops. One does not know that the lottery is held for such sinister purposes until the very end because Jackson makes the lottery appear normal and happy. Shirley Jackson uses tone and foreshadowing to argue that all people, regardless of how civilized they seem, are capable of great evil.
Jackson creates a cheery

tone to mislead people into thinking that the story will have a pleasant ending by using the setting, the people’s actions, and their views. Jackson paints the setting as a tranquil and peaceful summer day. The day is described as “clear and sunny” (L 1) with the flowers blossoming “profusely” (L 2-3). By painting a picture of a “normal” summer day, Jackson succeeds in showing that evil can be masked underneath a pretty exterior. Jackson has the villagers behave like there is nothing wrong with the lottery. The women “exchanged bits of gossip” (L 30-31), the children “broke into boisterous play” (L 14), and the men talked about “tractors and taxes” (L 26). The villagers partake in the everyday behavior of talking and playing to make it seem as if the lottery is also an everyday thing and that, just like any other everyday thing, there is nothing special about it. Jackson adds to the innocent tone with the villager’s views on tradition. The black box had been “used for generations” (L 72-73) and when it came to getting a new one, “no one liked to upset tradition” (L 58). The villagers believed, and continue to believe, so much in their lottery that they persist to follow tradition by participating in it year after year which would not be so bad if the lottery was normal and the villagers did not have to commit evil every time they partook in it. While Jackson wants the reader to think that it is just an ordinary summer day in the village, she simultaneously hints at the vileness to come.
Jackson provides hints about the evil to be enacted with the people’s expressions, their actions, and the lottery itself.

Jackson shows how the weight of wrongness is so high that the villagers cannot help but display it with their expressions. The villagers “smiled” (L 28) at jokes instead of laughing and grinned “humorlessly and nervously” (L 164). Jackson has the villagers try so hard to hide their feelings because she feels that is how people behave when faced with unpleasant things, they try to ignore it and put on a façade instead. Jackson uses the actions of the villagers to show that they are not as at ease as they seem. The young “clung” (L 23-24) to their parents and the adults “stood away from the pile of stones” (L 26-27). Jackson uses these actions because they are “fear actions”- a person clings to someone when they are afraid and people avoid something when it brings them discomfort- and she does this to show that the lottery is something one should be afraid of. Jackson hints that the lottery is not as ordinary as it appears to be. One villager talked about how they were “giving [the lottery] up” (L 192-193) in the north village and the people “hoped that it was not Nancy” (L 298) who would get the bad paper. With a normal lottery, people would not want to give it up and they would want to be chosen so in writing this, Jackson wants the reader to consider that this lottery is abnormal, that it is something one would actually want to avoid instead of partake

in. As a whole, nothing seems out of the ordinary but if a reader pays attention, they would see that the day is actually headed in a different direction than the one they first thought of.
With the aid of tone and foreshadowing, Shirley Jackson writes a story that shows how man at heart, no matter what he pretends to be on the outside, is actually very heartless. Jackson establishes a cheery tone for the story to prevent readers from thinking that the story will have a disturbing end. She uses foreshadowing to alert readers that something is very wrong with the lottery and that they should be prepared for something unsettling. In her story, human sacrifice is used for the desire of favor and the morality of it all is hardly questioned, at least, not out loud.