Literary Analysis of "The Lottery"

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Despite having read what is considered to be Shirley Jackson's most famous piece more than two weeks ago, I find myself still thinking about the story. Never in my life have I read a story that could so quickly take me from boredom to awe. Even more amazing is the fact that of the more than 3300 words in the story, it took only 6 for me to realize what was about to happen. “All right folks... Let's finish quickly.” With that since of shock still looming in the back of my mind, I could think of no better story to look at more in depth. The following is a in depth look at how I see the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson in the context of the seven perspectives of literary criticism. Using the school of formalist criticism to assess “The Lottery” we would first need understand that this method requires that we look at the story by itself under the assumption that it alone possesses all the necessary attributes to provide a meaningful stand-alone work. The author Jackson provides just enough detail as to the setting to allow the reader to gain a context from witch to proceed. The beginning and the end of the story address the center issue of the story, the lottery itself. There is quite clearly a massive amount of symbolism and imagery for which a second pass may even reveal more. The author chooses to build the suspense of the plot until the last few paragraphs in a way that only compounds the significance of the ending. Overall the work provides a unique and complete story that can clearly be read without outside input. If we look at “The Lottery” using biographical criticism school we would quickly see that the story had significance to Jackson's life in a number of ways. Despite being born in San Fransisco in 1916, the author moved to the east coast as a teenager. This would have provided an opportunity for her to learn of the witch

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