The Lottery By Anton Chekhov Analysis

All around the world we see an element of literature that continues to baffle and amaze us readers. This technique called irony is used by authors to draw readers in and also plays the function of tying stories together. The three types of irony that we see in these stories are dramatic, situational, and verbal irony. Without irony, a lot of these stories would be lacking depth and feeling. In “The Bet” by Anton Chekov; “He—y, Come on Ou—t!” by Shinichi Hoshi; and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson it is unveiled that each and every type of irony plays its own important role in forming stories. Out of the three types of irony, dramatic irony creates the most suspense. We know something that one of the characters don’t know, which builds to the story. In “The Bet” by Anton Chekov we see the important use of dramatic irony and
Verbal irony often comes in sarcasm, and it comes directly from one of the characters as speech. This type of irony contributes to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson because it shows how little Old Man Warner really knows. Although he is not sarcastic, whit his says is very ironic: “Pack of crazy fools… Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while” (4). Old Man Warner is trying to tell the villagers that the people that stop the group killings are wild savages, not the ones still competing in them. It is extremely ironic that the real savages are calling the civilized people wild and crazy. He also says, “Nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools” (4). Warner believes that brutally stoning someone won’t bring trouble, but not brutally stoning someone will bring trouble. Verbal irony’s function in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is to make a point about the villagers and how they hang on to traditions that are harming them solely because it has been done for a long