Kenley Duke D.E. English Professor Walker October 9th 2012 Analyzing Literature: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson Tradition, defined my Webster’s Dictionary, is an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior. Not once does it say that tradition is meant to have good intentions. Such is the case in the “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The villagers in this town gather annually to conduct what they refer to as “the lottery.” This gruesome event selects one of the town members to meet their untimely death by the mid-evil process of stoning.
Shirley Jackson was the author of “The Lottery” and she showed death by community. Once a year the townspeople gathered together and took a piece of paper from a black box. The first round of the drawing is just for the head of the family. Whichever man has the dotted paper then it is on to everyone in that family taking a draw. Now whoever has drew the paper with the dot on it is the one who gets stoned to death by the townspeople.
We wonder if Tessie would have spoken up if it was another family was chosen. What started as a normal day becomes a ritualistic death ceremony. “The Lottery”, may have many meanings it could express different themes and ideas. Most importantly The Lottery discusses conformity and rebellion. The towns people live their lives believing that the day of the lottery is a normal day and that sacrificing one of their will help them have a good crop season; and rebellion in the way that Tessie stood up for herself in front of the whole town to try to stay alive but did not succeed.
Kreon thinks that the person who caused all of this is Antigone. He thinks that Antigone caused this because it was her fault that that they had an argument in the first place about burying Polyneices. Kreon might think that of Antigone as his nemesis because she causes problems to his family and his empire. He deals with Antigone by slaving her and putting her into in a cave until she starved to death. “Be happy, You are living; but my soul died long ago, to be useful among the death”(pg.43).this are Antigones words which show she wanted to hang herself to be with her
The consequences of groupthink are rampant in Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”. In, “The Lottery”, Jackson presents many symbolic messages and themes that illustrate what happens when a society succumbs to groupthink in order to warn us of the dangers of not being our own critical thinkers and idly accepting things at face-value. The setting of “The Lottery” takes place on a warm and sunny day on June 27th. “The flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson). Every year during this time the residents of the village participate in a lottery.
In the end, the reader finds that there is a lack of loyalty amongst the people as Tessie Hutchinson is stoned to death- with her own children as participants in the murder- and the village is no longer seen as a delightful place but is visualized as evil and vindictive. The feminist approach can also be used to analyze The Lottery through women’s roles, actions, what happens to them, and what is said about them. There are several situations throughout the story that affect how the reader and how society might perceive the role of
Bear Grylls once said “A man's pride can be his downfall, and he needs to learn when to turn to others for support and guidance". In The Lottery, the villagers have a type of lottery that results in the death of a villager every time this lottery is held, and the villagers are too proud of this tradition to actually cease these meaningless deaths. Moreover, in The Necklace, the main character, Madame Mathilde, borrows what she thinks is a very expensive necklace from her friend and Mathilde’s vanity doesn’t allow her to actually admit that she loses it and she ends up wasting a decade of her life paying off debts. These two short stories support Grylls’ words by showing how pride or vanity has damaging effects for the characters in the stories, In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, the lottery box and the pearl necklace are symbols of human pride or vanity and show the inevitable downfall that comes
Instead of having close family ties as before, Mrs. Hutchinson now tries to better her odds by endangering her own daughters. The women in the crowd tell her to “be a good sport”(393). Instead of standing with their friend, they expect her to accept the outcome of this random chance draw, that left her holding the slip of paper with the black spot that meant she was to die. The entire town, including the rest of the Hutchinson family, proceeds to choose stones from the pile, previously gathered by the boys, and stone Mrs. Hutchinson to death. This small town seems to be the ideal place to live.
Alike a fictional story, it presents highly unrealistic events (the boy’s ability to foretell the winners of horse races, the whispering house). “The Lottery” is a short story about a small village gathering, an annual tradition of a drawing for one person to be the winner of the lottery. At first glance of both stories the reader will think that there is no likeness between the two short stories. By taking a closer look the stories develop similarities such as: love, symbolism and fear. A few cohesions are enhanced by human nature in the stories, and an old question “is human nature foreseeable?” Considering a deeper look into each story there is a profusion of symbolism in both stories.
Jake gylinhall Assignment #2 Wednesday Class The Lottery builds itself around suspense of an old tradition of stoning one person within the village every year. This story is more importantly about the importance and strength that tradition can have on many groups of people, and even a large town. Tradition involves handing down beliefs, practice, or ritual from generation to generation. However, there is an obvious problem with tradition, if we weren’t present at the time the tradition was made, who was to judge if this tradition, in its beliefs and practice, were ethical or just? The power that helps overcome this problem is by argumentum ad Populum.