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Review of the lottery by Shirley Jackson
The lottery character analysis essay
Review of the lottery by Shirley Jackson
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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. For example, Mr. Summers is said to be a jovial man who likes to host the public events. He is a clean, sharp dressed individual. He even ran the coal business. Although, as him being the man who runs the lottery
1. On June 27, the villagers of a small town got together for the town lottery. There are only 300 people in this village. The summer just started and everyone in the town collected stones together. Then families stand together. Mr. Summers ran the lottery because he does things for the village. A black box is brought out in front of everyone. Mr. Summers mixes up the slips of paper in the box. Then he calls everyone’s name in town. After he finishes calling names, everyone in town opens their papers. Bill Hutchinson received the winning ticket and Tessie protest against the lottery. Then everyone in her family redraws and it is Tessie who drew the paper with the black dot on it. Then villagers grab stones, and point them at Tessie. Finally, Tessie says it’s not fair and is hit in the head with a stone.
Shirley Jackson takes great care in creating a setting for the story, The Lottery. She gives the reader a sense of comfort and stability from the very beginning. It begins, "clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." The setting throughout The Lottery creates a sense of peacefulness and tranquility, while portraying a typical town on a normal summer day.
“The Lottery” is full of irony. Shirley Jackson most likely intended to use this amount of irony to make the over all story funny in its twisted theme. Each layer of irony used, prepared the reader to have the most dramatic reaction to the last and final blow that wrapped the whole story up.
In Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," what appears to be an ordinary day in a small town takes an evil turn when a woman is stoned to death after "winning" the town lottery. The lottery in this story reflects an old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order to encourage the growth of crops. But this story is not about the past, for through the actions of the town, Jackson shows us many of the social ills that exist in our own lives.
The word evil can have several different meanings, such as morally bad or wrong, the act of causing others to reevaluate their beliefs and assuming a completely new persona, or abusing an immense amount of power. One can only vaguely grasp the term evil given the definition of it. It takes one’s own experiences to thoroughly understand evil. Evil is when one purposefully outcasts a mass of people as a result of a common attribute. It is proceeding to do something immoral while recognizing its potential risks. Through the voice of Elaine Aron, Zimbardo claims that such qualities are embodied among ordinary people put under various pressures to create an evil situation. These traits repeatedly appear among characters in both American literature and history in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and the events related to McCarthyism.
In “The Lottery”, Jackson wrote about a special tradition of a small village. June 27th was warm and sunny, and it gave the impression like nothing could possibly go wrong. Everyone knows the lottery as an exciting thing, and everybody wants to win, but this lottery is unlike any other. This lottery was actually the tradition of stoning of an innocent villager; that year it was Tessie Hutchinson. Though the horrific ending was not expected, throughout the story Jackson gave subtle hints that this was not an average lottery. Jackson foreshadowed the death of Tessie Hutchinson with stones, the black box, and the three legged stool; she showed that unquestioning support of tradition can be fatal.
Every year, the lottery is held, and every year a person is killed. Each villager neglects to acknowledge the unjustness of the lottery and continue to participate because of the tradition it represents in their society. The lottery was a cultural tradition passed down from the very first settlers of the village. It makes up a huge part of the village’s history and culture. The villagers pay recognition to their culture by continuing the tradition of the lottery even though the lottery is not morally right. On page 93 it states, “There was a proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year… There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came to draw from the box…” This quote shows the tribal-like rituals and traditions associated with the lottery. Through the years, some of the rituals of the lottery were lost, but the main elements of the lottery remained the same. The idea behind the lottery was that the ancestors, of the villagers, believed that human sacrifice would bring in good harvest. This led to the development and continuation
Winning vast amounts of money can make anyone slaphappy, but unfortunately this type of wager won’t be discussed in Shirley Jacksons “The Lottery.” Jackson catches the reader’s attention by describing a typical day by using words such as “blossoming, clear and sunny skies” to attract the reader into believing a calm and hopeful setting which eventually turns dark. In this short story Jackson tells a tale of a sinister and malevolent town in America that conforms to the treacherous acts of murder in order to keep their annual harvest tradition alive. Jackson exposes the monstrosity of people within this society in this chilling tale. She allows the reader’s to ponder and lead them to believe that the lottery is actually a good thing; till she implements foreshadowing, to hint at the dreadfulness behind the lottery and its meaning. My goal in this paper is to discuss why Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a portrayed as a horror story, and the importance the townspeople used to glorify ritualistic killings, to appease to an unseeable force in return of good harvest for the upcoming year.
Shirley Jackson, born on December 14, 1916, devotes much of her life to the writing of short stories and novels. Some of these include The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Jackson's stories, inspiring and influential to most, are also controversial to some. Her most controversial story, published in 1948 in The New Yorker, is "The Lottery." The purpose for the writing of the story varies depending upon the reader, but some might say that it "expresses Shirley Jackson's abysmal opinion of her fellow creatures" (Coulthard 228). Whatever the purpose may be, "The Lottery" remains one of the most famous stories to date. Despite the controversy, readers also notice the symbols and underlying themes that are prevalent throughout the story including the role of obedience. The role of obedience is seen through the encounters of the characters including Old Man Warner and Tessie Hutchinson.
Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" portrays a small town in which the citizens gather for a yearly lottery. Unlike the "typical" lottery, this is not one you would want to win. Throughout "The Lottery," Jackson focuses on families from the village in order to demonstrate the role of separation of genders. Gender is defined as the sexual identity of a person, especially in relation to society or culture. Gender divisions exist within the community in "The Lottery" and issues of gender help to explain the characters action and thoughts.
In The Lottery, Shirley Jackson uses different elements to make the story more interesting. Jackson creates a feeling of joy and suspense throughout the story. She generates a diverse sense of empathy and emotion. In The Lottery, Jackson uses rituals and traditions to displays a variety of critical literary elements, such as the setting, symbols, the narrators point of view, and the tone of this story.
“It’s not the way it used to be. People aren’t the way they used to be.” A community is a group of people that often share the same cultural and historical heritage. “The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson that is about a community with a well supported tradition. The themes of community and change that are represented in the “The Lottery” are comparable to conversation topics about the development of Fort Wayne.
The short story The Lottery was published by Shirley Jackson in the magazine The New Yorker in 1948. It starts off explaining the setting of the story, it was a warm and sunny day with green grass and flowers growing profusely. In a village, smaller than usual where there are only about 300 people, they mainly grow crops and depend on them a lot. The main conflict is man vs. society, to go along with traditions, rituals, and sacrifices for the village. The Lottery is all about sacrifice that the village has to take. ‘’Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’’. The Lottery is on every June 27th where each head of the household draws a piece of paper from a black box, every family in the village does this. Once all of the families have drawn everyone opens
In Shirley Jackson's, "The Lottery", human morals and values are thrown away all for the pride of winning something. What is it that they really win? When you win the lottery in this story, you actually win death by stoning. Isn't that ironic, people actually being competitive and getting excited about death in public. What morals or values do these people really have, and how are they different from what common society is thought today?
There are some people who will never believe anything from what they think to be true. In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the small town of villagers have a day each year where they sacrifice one human amongst them, just because they have never imagined a time in their culture when they did not do such a thing. This impairs each characters’ judgment so that concepts that would normally be taken for wrong are somehow taken for right. It affects the town’s ability to grow because they cannot accept new ideas within their community. Therefore, “The Lottery” is an example of what happens when society can only distinguish two classes, specifically the working class and the wealthy leader class, which in this case would be an example