Literary Devices In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

English 102
September10, 2012
The Lottery “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, focuses around an unnamed village on a particular day in the mid summer on June the twenty seventh the time the annual lottery usually took place. The main purpose the lottery served was to make the happening of enough rain in order to have good corn crops the following month after the ritual. In a way the story evolves around the misguided belief that when the villagers sacrificed one of their own to what may seem to be or give the idea some sort of rain god, the after result would be that they would have good crops the very next year. The villagers also believed if they did not do the traditional ritual yearly, then they would regress to harder and
Also the day the lottery takes place described as “a day in mid summer” indicates the period of unconstrained growth and recklessness. Another literary device in the story, is the genre by showing horror and realism in placing the story in a generic small town and reviling the fate of the lottery winner at the end. A third literary device in the story, is the tone by showing detachment and calms of the tone through out the story from the beginning describing the sunny day, to witnessing the execution of one of the villagers at the end. A possibly good theme of “The Lottery” is that people should be aware of the dangers of blindly following
“The Lottery” at the time when it was published was so horrifying that most readers simply could not handle it so many complained. The story was also band in some places like in the Union of south Africa because is was some what in a kind of way offensive. The story has been described as being “ a chilling tale of conformity gone mad”. another literary criticism of this story was that the author used comedy and irony to suggest an underline evil, hypocrisy, and weakness of human