The family member that has chosen the slip of paper with the black dot on it has won the lottery, but the only thing that he or she has won is a cruel and unusual death by stoning. In this story Tessie Hutchinson is the one who wins the lottery. Tradition is an essential element t in any family or town. It sometimes seems as if tradition is the key factor that holds a community together, people bond over similarities such as a common tradition, but what if the very thing that is holding a community together is also destroying its people? Why would a community keep repeating the same mistake year after year and never think twice about why they were doing it in the first place?
Shirley Jackson wrote this story to shock her audience. She wanted to show a tradition that is highly corrupted taking place in a small and what seems to be, a normal town. The word, “tradition” means inherited or established customs or actions, In the story, some townsmen are talking about other towns getting rid of their lottery. The Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools.”(Jackson) He is referring to the other villages that have abolished this tradition. He also states that it is the seventy-seventh time he has attended the lottery, as if to say it has been around for a long time and will continue to be around.
However, a person is about to get chosen to get stoned to death. Moreover, the term, lottery, is usually defined as getting chosen in a positive event, ironically, the lottery in the story is seen as a misfortune pick of death. The story also delivers irony through the character, Old Man Warren, while he criticizes the people who quit lotteries “pack of young fools”. Jackson also wrote, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (pg.80) in order to deliver an ironic tone through her role of a narrator. The story also contains several examples of symbolisms.
Alfredo Barajas English Composition II James Yates, Ph.D. Fiction Analysis THE LOTTEY The word lottery suggests luck and happiness. Shirley Jackson gives a whole new meaning to the word “Lottery”. In the short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson intentionally gives the story a disturbing double meaning. “The lottery” it’s an ancient tradition in a rural town of 300 people somewhere in America. Every year on the 27th of June one of its villagers is going to get stoned to death.
The story shows how a small town clings obliviously to a tradition no matter how senseless or evil it is. The person who wins the lottery undergoes cruel and bizarre death by stoning at the hands of their fellow townspeople. This ritual is believed to bring a fruitful crop for the upcoming harvest season. Some have suggested that the lottery be stopped, but most find the idea unheard of because they have lived in its practice for most of their lives. One aspect of tradition is that it may be passed down from one generation to the next through its practice.
What if the tradition is so outdated though, that the actions it consists of could send you to prison for manslaughter? In the movie The Lottery, based on the short story by Shirley Jackson, director Daniel Sackheim helped prove a point that tradition may not always be socially justifiable. The movie is based in New Hope, Maine, where main character Jason goes to spread the ashes of his passed father on his mother’s grave. A viewer can quickly tell that the town is a homely, small town. After being lied to over and over by everyone in the town about the cause of his mother’s death, Jason becomes suspicious of the town.
A Look into the Black Box Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery", aroused much criticism in 1948, following its debut publication, in the New Yorker. Jackson uses irony and comedy to suggest an underlying evil, hypocrisy, and weakness of human kind. The story takes place in a small village, where the people are close and tradition is paramount. A yearly event, called the lottery, is one in which one person in the town is randomly chosen by a drawing, to be violently stoned by friends and family. The drawing has been around over seventy-seven years and is practiced by every member of the town.
The second section describes Emily’s life after her father’s death. She actually tried to deny her father’s death by keeping her father's dead body unburied. However the terrible smell make the town people crazy: “Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.” The third section begins with Emily’s sicking. The narrator notes that a foreman named Homer who comes from North with a crew of men to build sidewalks in Jefferson. After Emily and Homer are seen driving out on Sunday afternoons, Emily visits a druggist.
The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim. The story ends with a popular housewife of the town being unjustifiably stoned to her death. As she dies, she cries for help and it is as if she is no longer a person. It no longer matters who she was. The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck is a short story of an
With Ignorance, We All Lose The context of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is easily applied to almost any society. It can be gathered from the text that the subject is resistance, more specifically resistance to change. It tells of a village that is preparing for a yearly ritual that is to commence in only a few moments. Throughout the piece the reader is given a few details of the ceremony and the environment that it is to take place in. Ultimately the story leads to a murder the reader is not expecting.