Preview

An Analysis Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
415 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
An Analysis Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
This is a story about a small rural village that holds its annual lottery. Families in the village participate and the lottery starts by one representative from each family pulling a piece of paper from the black box the one who gets the paper with the black spot is stoned to death as per tradition of the lottery. This world that is created by Shirley Jackson in “The Lottery” is a dystopia.
When Bill Hutchinson pulled the paper with the black dot, his wife, Tessi, objects, saying that he didn’t have enough time to pick. Despite her protest, each member of the Hutchinson family, five in total, was required to pull slips of paper out of the box again to see who gets the black spot. In the end, Mrs. Hutchinson gets the black spot and is stoned
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Symbolism In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Symbolism In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    The Lottery, a short story written by Shirley Jackson explains two of the most important aspects of humanity: traditions and rituals. The story takes place in a small town in New England where every year a lottery is held, most people would relate lottery to wining cash. In this lottery one person will be randomly choose to be stoned to death by the people in the village including their own family members. The lottery has been practiced for over seventy years by the townspeople and even though the villagers do not know the purpose of this tradition or the origin of it, they keep it to show respect to their ancestors ignoring the fact that is cruel and it is turning the whole village into murderers.…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Analyzing Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'
    • 2906 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Analyzing Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'

    Thesis/Essay Map Statement: Through the names of the characters used, the ritualized use of a scapegoat, and the actions of the women in “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson symbolistically foreshadowed the unforeseeable ending and portrayed the culture of rural America.…

    • 2906 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,” (pg 52, line 260-261) sounds promising RIGHT? “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a beautiful nice June 27th when people are gathering around and one person is going to hell. The lottery was created was because the village had to sacrificing someone for a good harvest and now it’s just for tradition. Let’s go into detail on why the lottery was created.…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Evil Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 201 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Evil Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    Through her ability to display the grim reality of a small idealized town, Shirley Jackson unmasks the evil of tradition in “The Lottery.” She repeats that mindless rituals are unacceptable practices. Jackson begins her writing with, “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” (715). This first sentence gives us clues that there is not an extreme amount of emotion; it hints that the style reflects the attitudes of the villagers. The townspeople picture the lottery as normal and have no more emotion towards it than they do the flowers or the warm sunny day. The children begin collecting rocks as they are playing, and the adults…

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Powerlessness In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 227 Words
    • 1 Page

    Powerlessness In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    Jackson through the cautionary tale The Lottery displays the powerlessness of an individual when up against stronger external power. Tessie Hutchinson immediately disassociates her from the rest of the villagers as she ‘forgot what day it was’. Her initial support for the lottery is only paralleled by her subsequent desperation to get out of it as she demanded ‘to start over’ in an anxious tone. Tessie’s repetition ‘It wasn’t fair’ highlights her as a rebellious figure as she was the only one who questioned the lottery, contrasting to her husband who followed the other villagers’ repudiation of the protest by telling her to ‘shut up’ out of fear of being ashamed by the community. However, Tessie’s later reaction to her family being chosen displays…

    • 227 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Conformity In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 227 Words
    • 1 Page

    Conformity In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    Particularly, when the readers start reading Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” all seems normal and conformed. The villagers start to gather in the town's square where most, if not all the village functions happen like teen dances, celebrating different holidays. The expectations of the reader would not be any different, As the lottery is recognized as “A competition based on chance, in which numbered tickets are sold and prizes are given to the holders of numbers drawn at random; esp. such a competition as a means of raising money for the state or a charity. Also occas. as a mass noun: the action of playing in or running a lottery.” (OED)For example, in this instance, their civic duty is not a vote, or village decision, but it a process of elimination…

    • 227 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Symbolism And Irony In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Symbolism And Irony In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, is about a small town that meets on June 27, a beautiful day, for the annual lottery. All 300 people in this town meet in the town square and draw slips of paper out of a box, awaiting the person to have the one with the black dot on their paper. Once they find that Tessie Hutchinson, a mom, and wife, pick the paper with the black dot the town crowds around her and begins throwing rocks, stoning her to death. Jackson manipulates her readers so well that they ignore the symbolism and irony throughout the story, making Jackson not create the outcome she intended after having read the story because of the shock factor at the end and the illogical storyline.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Mortality And Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Mortality And Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is nothing less than a powerful story about a society that gathers once per year and holds a lottery. But this is not a lottery with a winner; it is a lottery with a loser. “The Lottery” is a chilling story because it depicts a sense of normalcy among the towns’ people when they randomly decided to kill a neighbor by practically just drawing straws. This story really asks the question, are rituals always a good thing? If rituals are a good or bad thing do we even know why we do it half the time? “The Lottery”, shows us that even though tradition may have been happening for years doesn’t mean that the traditions we choose to follow are beneficial.…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Ritual Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Ritual Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    It is often said that there is strength in numbers. While it is true that a large group of people has more power than an individual, a single person within a large group will almost always conform in some way. This weakens the individual and leads to fewer new ideas in order to maintain group status and agreement. Many times, rituals or ideas are allowed and accepted just because they are favored by a majority or have been part of that society for so long that they have become almost like a tradition. In "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson uses alarming images to guide the reader to understand the futility and foolishness of blind obedience to these rituals. The lottery “selection” emphasizes the importance of questioning what is right in front of you instead of just conforming mindlessly.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Literary Analysis
    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Literary Analysis

    “ The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, shows the corruption in a village whose people treat life with insignificance. Through the use of literary devices, Jackson portrays how practices in traditions can be barbaric;ultimately, resulting in persecution.…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'
    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Summary Of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'

    A short fictional story published by Shirley Jackson The Lottery was originally published in the magazine The New Yorker in 1948.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Duality Of Human Nature In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson
    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Duality Of Human Nature In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

    The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson in 1948, yet still, leaves a mark on any person who gets their hands on it today. The story starts out by setting an enjoyable atmosphere at the beginning of summer. The community gathers and the story almost fulfills the reader’s idea of a perfect town activity. However, the story has a sharp twist at the end that leaves the reader in shock. Jackson wrote the story to leave an impact and whom how quickly human nature can change. Shirley Jackson shows the duality of human nature in the characters of the children, Tessie Hutchinson, and Mr. Summers.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Analysis
    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Analysis

    In learning to read fiction well, one of the useful ways to approach the techniques of fiction is to analyze its setting. A setting may refer to the location or geography something occurs in general. According to The Cambridge Dictionary (1996), the setting is the time and the place in which the action of a book, film, play and so on happens. A setting is the description of the situation or condition that covers the story including the description of place and time (Stanton, 1965: 35).…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Significance Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Significance Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    “Tradition is a guide not a jailer.” (W. Somerset Morgan) This quote shows how people take pride in being part of a tradition and ritual. Similarly, in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a human is sacrificed every year to follow and honor an old custom that was stamped ever since the town was established. This year out of a village of 300 people, Bill Hutchinson's family won the lottery, and in the second round of the raffle, out of all five members of the family, Tessie Hutchinson had the card with the black mark meaning she was going to be sacrificed. Shorty after winning, Tessie was stoned to death as a sacrifice to the gods. The lottery was conducted because the villagers want to follow an old ritual and tradition which…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Abstract the Lottery by Shirley Jackson
    • 2329 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Abstract the Lottery by Shirley Jackson

    linguistic techniques include: the use of the article “the,” the lack of adverbs and adjectives in…

    • 2329 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics