Preview

Powerlessness In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
227 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
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

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    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
  • Good Essays

    Shirley Jackson’s shorty story, “The Lottery” demonstrates no sense of compassion or reluctancy when Tessie Hutchinson is chosen as the ‘winner' to be stoned. Jackson’s description of the proceedings following Mrs. Hutchinson’s win sharpens the violence, as she writes, “The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready…And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles”…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Furthermore, the theme and conflict of the stories were developed by the use of situational irony. In “The Possibility of Evil” the irony of the effect of the letters on the town creates a greater evil in society rather than eliminate it, through the irony the conflict of Ms.Strangeworth vs society is created. In “The Lottery” the irony of Tessie Hutchinson conforming to the tradition and then objecting as she is stoned to death creates the theme “the dangers of following traditions blindly”. Looking at the picture, the theme and conflicts of these stories cause the reader/society to question morals and to looks for flaws in oneself before looking in others. Doing so will help accomplish Shirley Jackson’s underlying message to improve the shortcomings…

    • 126 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Well, you definitely have to read this story more than once to pick up on all of the small subtleties…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The horror that I felt when looking back upon this story, was only amplified by rereading it, knowing what the ceremony actually would entail. The unsuspecting reader begins the story thrown into a lovely summer seen in a quaint village. Details about children attending school, men and women chatting, lull the reader into contentment. Once the reveal is made, tiny, once insignificant details cast the story in completely new light, an awful one. This contrast between the relive happiness of the beginning, and the grimness at the end heightens the aspect of horror.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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
  • Good Essays

    Brutality is a universal force in people’s lives that most have already gotten used to indirectly, yet people claim otherwise. But are their claims true or false? We become known to see news of people getting murdered or of cases of abuse in the home or somewhere else and claim right away that how horrible it is and that we as people would never do something this awful, but we prove these things false in our daily lives. So what makes us different than the town in “The Lottery” or the people behind the attacks in Paris? Nothing is different at all. “The Lottery” and the Paris attacks were acts of violence based on people's different beliefs.…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Lastly, another theme in the story is persecution; the villagers persecute each other at random no matter if villagers are innocent or children are at stake. Whenever the lottery is played, each family is in danger. When Tessie Hutchison slip is unfolded, she is marked and no matter what, she is chosen to get stoned to death. Even her own husband prosecutes her and turns his back on her, “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip out of her hand” (295). No one is safe in this tradition and everyone will point a finger, based on race, class and religion.…

    • 104 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In “The Hunger Games,” the district really never has a say so on that is selected, but yet everyone gathers to watch. Similarly in “The Lottery” villagers gather to select a ticket to find one villager to be stoned to death. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the events of the narrative seem to suggest that traditions are a normal part of society. However a close look at the use of irony and foreshadowing demonstrate the lack of normalcy in the community. The tension in these readings ultimately indicates complacency in our society with the status quo until we become the victims.…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “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
  • Good Essays

    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
  • Good Essays

    In Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” it is evident that conforming to society and sticking with tradition can lead to outweighing personal morals./be a burden on the lives of people. Although The Lottery was a tradition that has been occurring for years, nobody sticks up to support their morals to challenge The Lottery. Not only does The Lottery limit the rights of many, but many other expectations in their society do too.…

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “ 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
  • Good Essays

    In “The Lottery”, Jackson starts off the story by describing the town on June 27. He first describes the uneasiness of all the children. He writes, “School was recently over for the summer, and the feelings of liberty sat uneasily on most of them.” The students were worried that her family could lose a person. Although, most of the town was scared, there were the little boys who were excited to throw stones and had them stocked up. Jackson makes the youth represent a carefree life. The girls end up being too busy looking for guys to be scared of the black box. They were taught this day, as tradition and that they cannot break tradition. Jackson made the reader want to continue to find out why June 27 was so important. He gave a similar effect in “Charles”. Jackson sums up the entire meaning of the story in the first sentence. The narrator says, “The day my son Laurie started kindergarten, he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.” Jackson stated that Laurie wants to become an individual. The situations that Shirley Jackson…

    • 699 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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