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
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.
A second theme that Shirley Jackson displayed is that following the crowd can have dangerous consequences. It was obvious that Bill Hutchinson went to his wife and forced her to show the others that she had the slip with the “black spot” after doing so, Tessie is designated as the “winner” and the story states: “The children had stones already”. This line from the story shows that because of the actions of the community, little Davy followed the actions of the crowd and contributed to the stoning of his mother’s death. Another example was shown as, the story states, “the children were already stoning Tessie, and that someone gave little Davy some pebbles, as if it were a game in which he should participate”. This
They all looked for her and then when they did, she was dragged and then tied to a chair. She even cried out to her mom for help in anger, but no one came in to comfort her. When she got used to the place she started to speak broken English and found ways to rebel in a way that was quiet. There was this one time where Zitkala-Sa was mashing turnips. She mashed so hard that the bottom of the jar broke and all the mashed turnips fell to the floor.
This is one reason why this is the worst thing that happened to America. Although millions of lives were lost in all the wars our country were in, there was reason why people died. People that died shouldn’t be blamed but the fact that their country decided to come into war is still in the air. The people of Salem had no business whatsoever and were blamed for having a doll in their home or because they simply had a wart. The people of the town were pressured, accused, and tested simple tests but the girls would scream with such pain whenever the accused spoke.
The story starts out by talking about Miss Emily Grierson’s funeral. Readers will most often sympathize with a character if the author provides a sense of vulnerability, such as death. Further on in the story, we find out Emily’s father had passed away and her sweetheart had left her. Furthermore, the townspeople are always complaining about the smell of Miss Emily’s house. Judge Stevens says to one of the townspeople, “’will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?’” (545), which provides the reader with even more sympathy than before.
The Puritan society and women looked at this sin in antipathy. Her punishment was to wear the scarlet A and stand on the scaffold for several hours as embarrassment for what she has committed. Throughout the book, we realize that she is not so bad after all and starts giving back to the poor. As quoted from Nathaniel Hawthorne, “She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy...The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification.” (144) This causes the scarlet letter to now represent “Able” and proves that Hester didn’t try to commit her sin or hurt others around her.
Their sin not only affects their own lives, but the lives of Hester’s child, Pearl, and husband Roger Chillingworth. It was discovered that Hester had been with another man when she became pregnant in the absence of her husband. She was put in jail and eventually sentenced to hours on the scaffold and a lifetime of wearing the scarlet letter to remind her of her sin. On the scaffold, Hester, feels cut off from everyone else in the community and is given time to think about her life. At first she tries to hide the scarlet letter but she soon realizes that she can hide it all she wants but the pain will always be in her heart(Hawthorne 2.6).
“Miss Emily’ William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” (1930), illustrates that Emily was a reclusive, stubborn, “daddy’s girl” with abandonment issues. Emily is portrayed as a recluse due to her extreme lack of interaction with the town’s people, so much so, that the town’s people more or less seen her as a mysterious town monument. After her death, the entire town attended her funeral, either out of respect for “..a fallen monument..” (Faulkner 1) or simply “..out of curiosity to see the inside of her house..” (Faulkner 1). She was someone they traded stories about, but rarely saw, like an old myth. To illustrate Faulkner’s portrayal of Emily’s stubbornness, he describes her unwillingness to pay taxes.
The Thirteen Roses reflected an amount of feelings and needs of a starving, frighten and unwell society through the war. As an example, this group of women suffered the injustice to die for being against the dictatorship, with any judgment or opportunity to defend themselves. Cause of this injustice is the lack of human rights in that time, dying hundreds of people as victims of the abuse of power of Francisco Franco. Despite immense differences in cultures, heroes around the world generally share a number of traits that inspire people (Ted Tollefson, “Is a Hero Really Nothing but a Sandwich?” 1993, 162-163). One of these traits that shared these heroines that inspire people is the youth rebellion.