Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.”(300) Though Tessie did not want to draw the slip that would decide her fate, she complies because it is tradition and Mr. Summers. Tessie Hutchinson reminds me of a pouting child in the above quote, if she was truly rebelling against the lottery she wouldn’t have drawn a slip, and she abides by the authority of Mr. Summers. In conclusion, Tessie Hutchinson adheres to the tradition of the lottery by coming to the lottery, cheering her husband on while he draws, and even drawing her slip of paper.
In the lottery Shirley Jackson mentions at the beginning when the people are gathering in the town square how the women are greeting each other and gossiping. This can serve to show how the women in this town feel towards the lottery. It shows their lack of worry and care for the fact that in the end of this event someone will be dead. The way this short story is written makes us believe that the winner will receive a prize or something good. It is not until the
The unfortunate winner of the lottery. Tessie complains at the end of the story that the lottery is not fair, however her words fall on deaf ears as the first stone is cast into her head and suddenly the town was "upon her’. Tessie Hutchinson is not meant to be portrayed as a metaphor, but she does represent the victim of the story. Tessie was chosen for a brutal act at random. Tessie’s attitude before and after she is selected as the winner of the lottery.
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.
“Harrison Bergeron” and “Revelation” also share similar irony. Both use irony in a humorous way to make the characters situations seem less bleak. While “The Lottery” and “Cathedral” use irony to emphasis the allegory in “Harrison Bergeron”, it is funny and ironic that George says he does not want to lighten the weight he wears because then everyone would start cheating, and they would all go back to the dark ages. In “Revelation” the book the girl is reading and later throws at Mrs. Turpin is called human development. It is funny that she is
Everyone says that Mr. Hutchison got the paper and Tessie states that the lottery wasn’t fair because he didn’t have enough time to choose the paper. The whole Hutchison family comes up to the front and the all draw a slip of paper. They found that Tessie was the winner of the lottery since she had picked the paper with the black dot. All the villagers begin to grab the stones that the kids had already piled up. They get around Tessie and start throwing them at her while she screams that it is not fair.
Sometimes if a child was old enough to carry a gun, Quantrill would do the same to them, right in front of their family. This is one of the reasons Quantrill was known as the bloodiest man in America. Only forty guerillas died in that raid. The Lawrence raid was the bloodiest day in Kansas History. There was said to be more than one hundred eighty people dead as a result of the raid.
She told Mrs. Delacroix that she “clean forgot what day it was” (Jackson 215). Mrs. Hutchinson’s whole attitude changed when she found out she was the winner of the lottery. She immediately began telling the villagers “It isn’t fair!” when she drew the paper with the black dot (Jackson 218). It was ironic how Tessie was in a good mood until her name was announced, and then her attitude quickly changed to despair. Jackson used irony when she chose the title “The Lottery”.
People like Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin being in charge of the lottery suggests that they are above everyone, which is not a characteristic of a democracy. What does Mrs. Delacroix’s extra-large stone say about the loyalty and logic in “the Lottery”? What does the large stone represent? How might she justify the killing of Tessie? Mrs. Delacroix, obviously a friend and neighbor of Tessie, who just moments before [the stoning] was laughing with Tessie about her forgetfulness, and reassuring her that she was fine for her tardiness.
Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations” (Jackson 2). This can represent how men in older times were the ones to die, but now it’s the women’s turn. The lottery itself is symbolic. Normally, the lottery makes people happy because it is very beneficial to them, but not in this story. The lottery is a winning party to the people who lose and death to those who win.