The Lottery Conclusion

Shirley Jackson’s renowned short story “The Lottery” is one of the most recognized short stories today as it draws people in due to the work’s unexpected ending. Centered in a small, unnamed town, “The Lottery” follows the townspeople throughout their annual lottery process that is performed with the same level of regard as the school dances. Throughout the story the ‘prize’ of the lottery is not revealed until the moment in the story’s conclusion in which the protagonist, Tessie Hutchinson, is hit in the head with the first of many rocks after drawing the marked slip of paper revealing that to win the lottery is to be stoned by the community (Jackson 673-679). This paper presents an analysis of the story, as furthered and supported by various

From the very first clue given about the story, its title “The Lottery”, readers are led to assume it is to be a story about winning a grand prize. Due to today’s culture, readers associate winning a lottery with gaining enormous wealth or extravagant items: a prize sure to make anyone happy and excited. Dr. V. Sudhakar Naidu, an associate professor of English at the University of Tripoli in Libya, echoes this sentiment in his own research in stating: “this extremely subversive irony was a factor that led to many readers’ outrage over the story” (230) as they are deceived before the story has even

As Tessie hurriedly arrives late to the gathering, the community jokes of her tardiness with playful banter such as the exchange between Mr. Summers and Tessie over dirty dishes (675). All of which leads the reader to believe the town to be just an ordinary village gathering. Amy Griffin supports this use of setting to mislead the reader in her argument that summer is “a time usually associated with cheerfulness” and that “the picnic like atmosphere betrays the serious consequence of the lottery” (45). Some notes of discord are scattered in the text such as the boys gathering of stones and the nervous air of the people who stood silent and still as Mr. Summers described the process, however these are easily overlooked by the readers due to the pace of the story being largely dedicated to describing the tradition’s mechanics and lost aspects (Jackson