Irony in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
“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.
I would say the most major and obvious type of irony used here was situational irony. Jackson knew that what most peoples’ impression of the lottery is winning money or something good. She played on that and turned it into something completely opposite. Giving her story kick and uniqueness.
However, there was other more minor but essential situational ironies that lead up to the finale. One of these was Tessie Hutchinson. She had the...
In Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut, the plot focuses on a man who tends to regress back to his childhood, and earlier life using three important themes. These important themes are the destructiveness of war, the illusion of free will, and the importance of sight. In this novel, Kurt Vonnegut reflects on his experiences in the war in 1945 as a prisoner of war. This man is named Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is a former prisoner of war who tends to be stuck in the same mindset as before. Billy is seeking forgiveness for his past, so that one day he can reach an oasis of serenity. Serenity is the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled with life. In order to reach serenity, Billy Pilgrim comes across a prayer. The prayer of serenity
“Fate is a misconception, it's only a cover-up for the fact you don't have control over your own life.” –Anonymous. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-five, an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time uncontrollably and constantly travels between his past, present, and future. Since Pilgrim is unable to control his time warps, he is forced to re-live agonizing moments such as watching his wartime friend Edgar Derby executed for stealing or going through the Dresden bombing repeatedly. However, he is also able to visit pleasant moments like speaking as president in front of the Lions club or his honeymoon with his wife, Valencia. Vonnegut’s use of repetition and vision of war, time and death are crucial to Pilgrim as he warps through time emotionless due to the fact that he knows, and will always know what will happen next.
Irony is when what is said is different than, what appears to be real. A media that utilizes irony is “The Hunger Games when Prim Rose got picked to participate in the game even though Katniss' name was in the draw more. Irony is not only shown in movies bit, in Television shows and stories as well. “The Possibility of Evil,” “The Skating Party” and “The Lottery” are three short-stories that show irony. “The Possibility of Evil” is about a 71-year-old woman, living in a small town, growing beautiful roses and she spends her days trying to the town of evil. “The Skating Party” is about someone's first love and how they lost them. ”The Lottery” is about a tradition in a small village that everyone, but one person wants to give up. The short-stories
Fate is “something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot,” while free will is “the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses person choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.” Kurt Vonnegut uses Billy’s experiences in Slaughterhouse-Five to display the idea that free will is all but an illusion; all decisions in life are made by influences, whether from within or from
Vonnegut has the opinion that free will is “rarely used in any of his novels” (Westerblom 17). Vonnegut believes that the characters in his novel “have suffered at the hands of fate for so long that they often give up on exerting their free will and surrender to their fate” (17). Billy is the best example of this in his novel. Westerblom says “his experiences from the war together with his sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Billy surrenders control of his free will and embraces his fate” (17). Schroder states her belief in an article that Vonnegut views quietism and “fatalism” as a coping mechanism for a person to “slip blissfully and thoughtlessly into the mindless routine of daily existence thus dismissing free will” (qtd. in
Have you ever read the story of a princess kissing a frog, having it turn into a prince? Well, what if it didn’t become a prince, but she turned into a frog herself! This is called irony, something we would not expect to happen. In the story of the princess we would not expect that to happen. In the story “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, we see this situation in another form. She uses irony to bring out the point in her story. “The Lottery,” offers an “ironic twist of fate” that causes wonder and makes one sympathize with the characters.
box. We do not always enjoy change, even if it might prove beneficial to us.
Jackson uses the lottery itself to function as an ironic symbol of tradition in the story. In today’s society, a lottery is an event that has positive connotations related to it. A lottery a game that is associated with fun, chance, fun, and expectation. Good things usually result from lotteries especially for those who win. Furthermore, those who don’t win have nothing to lose. Lotteries bring forth a feeling of great expectation of a wonderful outcome. Through out the story, the lottery is projected as a harmless and affable pastime, which is how it is used in today’s society; however, by the end of the story it ends with disaster.
However, If we read this quote again after we finish reading the whole story, we would realize this quote is actually parts of the irony Jackson puts in this story. A clear and sunny day is suppose to represent the beginning of a wonderful day, but what it really represent is the beginning of a ruthless story. This quote is provoking because it fit in with the genre very well, a Utopian beginning for the story but ends with a dystopian ending. This sarcastic beginning shows the rhetorical strategy used by Shirley Jackson in order to show her message to her audiences, that the lottery is something "usual" that happens in a usual day . Although dystopian should not have such a nice beginning, it works very well when readers read it for the second time. All of us here have been grimly moved by Shirley Jackson’s story.… Was it purely an imaginative flight, or do such tribunal rituals still exist and, if so, where(Franklin, 1)? “The Lottery” was post on June 26th on the New Yorker, and the lottery begin at the 27th. Shirley Jackson uses it to approach her audiences and leads them to a question, it is
Typically, when someone thinks of a lottery they think of something positive and exciting but contrary to this idea in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the connotation has an entirely different meaning. As the story begins, readers lean towards the belief that the town in which Jackson depicts is filled with happiness and joy. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 247) We soon realize that this notion is far from the truth. As the townspeople gather in the square for the annual lottery, which sole purpose is to stone someone to death by randomly pulling a paper out of a black box with a black dot on it, it is learned
In Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery,' irony is a major theme. This story is about a town full of elitist snobs that are stuck on their tradition of a lottery, even though it is a grim ritual and rather detrimental to the people in the town. The characters are honoring a tradition that is handed down to them from former generations. The reader is led through the outwardly normal and charming little village, and is taken on a ride of ironic horror as they slowly grasp the annual fate of one the village?s inhabitants. The title ?The Lottery? implies a contest with a winner of some kind, like a sweepstakes. When in reality the winner is actually the loser or person that will die by stoning. At the beginning of this story, the main character, Mrs. Hutchinson, is in favor of the lottery. The atmosphere of the town is casual yet anxious. Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late because she ?clean forgot? what day it is. This seems quite impossible to any reader that anyone would forget a day like lottery day. Her procrastination is reasonable but her excuse is lame. Mrs. Hutchinson complains that her husband, Bill, ?didn?t have enough time to choose.? And that the results of the drawing were not fair. In these statements, she is implying that the other villagers had more time to choose, and in fact given an advantage over the Hutchinson family. In reality, time had little to do with the drawing of the ?slips of paper.? As soon as they hold the second drawing, Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen. This is the climax of irony of this story. Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen for the lottery. She is shocked and astounded, having believed that she couldn?t possibly be chosen for the lottery. She begs or mercy, but the townspeople are strict with keeping to their traditions and her pleas of mercy fall on deaf ears and she is stoned to death.
"The Lottery" is "symbolic of any number of social ills that mankind blindly perpetrates" (Friedman 108). The story is very shocking, but the reality of mankind is even more shocking. Isn’t it funny that Jackson gives us a description of our nature, and not only do we not recognize it for what it is , but it shocks us.
The primary message that Jackson shows in “The Lottery” is that people can be involved with such a violent act and think nothing of it. In the story all the people are happy, “they stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.”(244) All the people in the town gather together without question to perform this horrible act of murder. All the people think nothing of this terrible act. Mr. Summers the man that runs the whole lottery says, “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work.”(245) This illustrates how they think of the lottery as an everyday occurrence. Old Man Warner says, “lottery in June, c...
In conclusion, the use of symbolism, irony and setting in the Lottery is very evident, the author indirectly implicates the true darkness within the human heart. The Lottery remains relevant in society today because the overall vagueness of the city allows this story to be true to all people around the world. The short story shows us that humans are evil enough to follow traditions blindly, even if they cause pain and death in loved ones we know. Jackson also centers a lot of symbols and irony on religion and how they affect our culture and decisions. In this the reader can learn that sometimes it’s better for a person to follow his moral compass, and not just blindly follow his evil heart, and the evilness of others.
Free will is an introspective concept that humankind believes in, and hopes to understand. “Every professional and indeed, every amateur philosopher has given his opinion on the matter, and Kurt Vonnegut, who falls into a very special category of amateur, that of Writer, gives his as well, although not, perhaps, without a touch of irony” (Bourré 2013). Vonnegut’s opinion that is given in Slaughterhouse-Five, seems to say that mankind has no free will. He emphasizes the futility of free will through the symbolism, which dispersed throughout the book, in various symbols such as the Tralfamadorians, a recurring motif and the use of a disjointed narrative.