Annie Keene Mr. Cummings English 9H 29 October 2013 “The Lottery” In the short story, “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson focuses on a small town whose villagers conduct a yearly lottery, in which the person who draws a piece of paper containing a block spot on it gets stoned to death by the remaining villagers. Although within this tradition there involves a human sacrifice, the villagers remain obedient to the society there were raised in, and contribute to it. It is through the loyalty of characters Old Man Warner and Davy Hutchinson, the setting of an old fashioned town, as well as the symbols of the black box and black spot that display the primary theme that people born into a society follow its traditions, reluctant to change, for they
In fact, Jones used situational irony to draw attention to the main parts of the story such as when Ned had died from winning the lottery after playing his whole life, only to die from shock shortly after. Another example would be when the man who worked for the lottery was divining back after issuing the cheque almost hit the phone booth with the woman in it, he did miss it but unfortunately in his attempts to avoid it he had caused another vehicle to swerve out of control and knock it off the mountain. What made this so important and ironic is that she was the only person in the village that had not agreed to sign saying that she will lie about Ned being alive and strangely enough… It is actually the priest who had hit her off the mountain and killed her. Evidently it is quite obvious that Kirk Jones had intentionally used irony at a good portion of the main events in the film to help build the viewer’s interest and to move the plot forward throughout the film. Similarly to Waking Ned Devine, Frank O’Conner’s The Drunkard uses one very obvious form of irony, Situational.
La`Michael Boles English 101 Leah Halliday Little Black Box In the story “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, the people of the town believed in holding a lottery every year. They picked one name and then the winner would be killed. They held on to an old black box which they all knew they needed to get rid of, but didn’t. The black box in “The Lottery” represented old traditions, loyalty, and lack of knowledge. The black box represented old traditions in the community.
In this story, the towns people potrayed just that: weakness against change. There were many reasons for this falter, and in this particular situation: the older generation was stagnant when it came to breaking the unlawful tradition. The reason the town followed the tradition was for no other reason than it was what they had always known. Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, said “There’s always been a lottery”(2). When Mrs. Adams said “some places have already quit lotteries”(2), Old Man Warner responded by saying “nothing but trouble in that… Pack of young fools”(2).
Patti Mullins Professor Nelson Composition 1302 2 August 2011 “Lottery Symbolism Revealed” In "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson’s shocking short story seeks to caution her readers to question their own existing traditions, social rituals, and customs and to bring attention to the inhumanity prevalent in society today. The tradition of “The Lottery” in this case is similar to religious traditions because religion in most instances is passed on to children at a very early age without question and children rarely openly question their parents’ choice in that matter. In addition, the villagers in this story sacrificed a symbolic scapegoat as their means of atonement. The 300 townspeople of a small New England town gather
Comedy and a calm tone in the beginning of “The Lottery“ may imply the exact opposite of what is to happen. However, readers will quickly see that everything is not what it seems. As readers, we can take many different things from the quote, “although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use the stones (Jackson 10)” The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson makes a bold and controversial statement concerning hypocrisy and flawed human nature. In the short story, readers are informed of the traditional nature of the village. However, we are also informed of the many broken traditions.
Partly, this is due to the fact that his works were “lost” until the 1800’s. To this day, they only exist in a single manuscript, the Cotton MS Nero A.x., which was in a private collection for a couple hundred years. When it resurfaced in the late 1800’s, this manuscript was noted for its poetic prowess and entered academic circulation. The man behind this, though, is entirely unknown – there isn’t even a widely accepted speculation. Hence, this is the reason for the
As the antagonist of this story, the villagers’ show the danger of following tradition with questioning their origin or purpose. The processes leading up to the lottery that are described in this short story are relatively detailed in comparison to the small amount of information provided as to why it ever began. The lottery has been occurring for at least 77 years and in not just in this town, but other surrounding ones. The closest explanation as to why the lottery began is the mention, ”Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (220). This suggests that the process and sacrifice of the lottery may lead to a bountiful agricultural harvest.
However, the habitual acceptance of the lottery has made ritual homicide a part of the community lore. When murmurs about change begin to drift through the town, the superstitious voice of Old Man Warner makes the townspeople fear that their whole way of life would fall apart without this grisly drawing. The random elements of society violence also appear as a theme in "The Lottery." There is no reason for Tessie Hutchinson to die other than that she happened to draw the wrong slip of paper. However, once that took place, she stopped being a member of the community.
The Analysis of the Lottery The short story “The Lottery” narrated a story about the people of a small town held an activity of lottery and the person who got the lottery would be hit to death by stones for the sake of harvest of the following year. Read through the whole story, we can know that the lottery completely show the blind obedience, less of rationality and cruel coldness of human nature of the whole town people. In the beginning of the story, the author described a quiet and peaceful, common and beautiful scene of the small town. For example, the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. These descriptions of the surrounding environment gave readers a kind of quiet and peaceful feeling so that it made readers think there would not happen anything bad.