the lottery
The Lottery
The Lottery is a short southern gothic story written in the late 1940s by Shirley Jackson. It is about a small town of around 300 normal everyday people, who because of tradition have to draw every year out of a black box for somebody to be stoned to death. In this short southern gothic story Jackson uses imagery of an everyday normal town to show the potential in ordinary people to do evil things, and also foreshadows the fatal ending. They story starts out “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.”, which leads the reader to believe that the story is going to be a happy one because June, clear and sunny, and summer day all have a positive conation. That diction usually reminds people of sports picnics and playgrounds not somebody being stoned to death by their own family and neighbors. This is done purposely by Jackson because she want the reader to learn that evil is not always in cold and dark places, it could even be in your own house hold and you would not even know it. In the story the author creates a scene where boys are playing and the girls are snickering about them, the men are talking about farming and taxes while the women gossiping. This shows the reader that this town is an everyday average American town with kids being kids and adults supervising while talking with one another probably no different from any other little American town and yet they are randomly selecting a person every year, knowing that they are going to kill them, and for what? So that they will hopefully have a heavy corn load. This shows the reader that evil isn’t only contained in Nazi concentration camps and third world countries that is can be anywhere even small-town USA. Throughout the story Jackson foreshadows the gruesome end, like when “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed
The Lottery is a short southern gothic story written in the late 1940s by Shirley Jackson. It is about a small town of around 300 normal everyday people, who because of tradition have to draw every year out of a black box for somebody to be stoned to death. In this short southern gothic story Jackson uses imagery of an everyday normal town to show the potential in ordinary people to do evil things, and also foreshadows the fatal ending. They story starts out “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.”, which leads the reader to believe that the story is going to be a happy one because June, clear and sunny, and summer day all have a positive conation. That diction usually reminds people of sports picnics and playgrounds not somebody being stoned to death by their own family and neighbors. This is done purposely by Jackson because she want the reader to learn that evil is not always in cold and dark places, it could even be in your own house hold and you would not even know it. In the story the author creates a scene where boys are playing and the girls are snickering about them, the men are talking about farming and taxes while the women gossiping. This shows the reader that this town is an everyday average American town with kids being kids and adults supervising while talking with one another probably no different from any other little American town and yet they are randomly selecting a person every year, knowing that they are going to kill them, and for what? So that they will hopefully have a heavy corn load. This shows the reader that evil isn’t only contained in Nazi concentration camps and third world countries that is can be anywhere even small-town USA. Throughout the story Jackson foreshadows the gruesome end, like when “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed