Shelly Kasper Jodi Stapleton English 1102 The lottery symbolism “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story about how every citizen in a small town is forced to take part in the annual lottery. What the reader soon finds out is that this is not the type of lottery that one would want to win, and the only reason why the town holds this type of lottery every year is because of tradition. A cheerful tone seems to be set from the very beginning when Jackson describes a warm sunny summer’s day; school is just getting out and everyone appears content. Next she describes the children and adults gathering stones for the lottery. This is the first event that makes the reader question the action of the townspeople.
With Ignorance, We All Lose The context of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is easily applied to almost any society. It can be gathered from the text that the subject is resistance, more specifically resistance to change. It tells of a village that is preparing for a yearly ritual that is to commence in only a few moments. Throughout the piece the reader is given a few details of the ceremony and the environment that it is to take place in. Ultimately the story leads to a murder the reader is not expecting.
Many murders have been made, many threats, and suicides. Many cases have been able to take place because of guns. Therefore, gun control must definitely take place in the society that we live in today. Then, why do some people desire the country to require everyone to have gun in their homes? Why is it that they want the guns to lie around as if they were nothing dangerous?
The youth are affected by becoming desensitized at an early age; laughing at death, mocking the injured, showing no remorse (Grossman 502). Young adults that had been exposed to this violence at a young age are getting ahold of guns and ammunition killing convenience store owner’s by ‘accident’ (Grossman 503). Their conditioning and reflex motor skills activate, Operant Conditioning, causing stimulus response to assimilate in an impulsive manner. Exposing children to war brutality through media is conditioning them to breed violence. Killing is a trained skill forced upon a man; viciously cycled through younger age groups.
Specifically, Jackson writes that the villagers recall there was, at one time, “a recital of some sort,” and that “some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.” (25) These once important procedures were now no more than talk among the villagers, of how the lottery “was originally conducted.” The specific details, lost throughout time, did not prevent the “tradition” from occurring year after year. The villagers reverence toward tradition and fear of the unknown leads them to blindly accept the lottery without question. This blind acceptance allowed a ritual of murder to continue in the village while overlooking the actual history and details. Jackson writes, “Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations.” (25) The villagers justify this annual murder by the
Shirley Jackson wrote this story to shock her audience. She wanted to show a tradition that is highly corrupted taking place in a small and what seems to be, a normal town. The word, “tradition” means inherited or established customs or actions, In the story, some townsmen are talking about other towns getting rid of their lottery. The Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools.”(Jackson) He is referring to the other villages that have abolished this tradition. He also states that it is the seventy-seventh time he has attended the lottery, as if to say it has been around for a long time and will continue to be around.
As the story progresses the townspeople discuss how nearby towns no longer run a lottery and wonder if they should do the same. The oldest member reinforces the timelessness of the tradition by stating that there’s always been a lottery and that’s just how it’s done. One family in particular is singled out by the mother, Tessie Hutchinson, arriving late and her young son running away from her only to be reprimanded by his father. As they all talk to each other, it is clear this is a small town where everyone knows each other and everyone gets along quite
Another parent, Wanda Holloway, was convicted of hiring someone to murder the mother of her daughter’s cheerleading rival. One coach, in Pennsylvania, paid a player on his tee-ball team to injure fellow seven year old player because he is autistic, and the coach felt that Harry was bringing down the team. Though these are extreme cases the practice of adults ruining sports for their kids is not uncommon. Youth leagues have set up background checks on coaches, which helps the situation, but as seen from the examples above, more of the downfalls in youth sports occur from parents than from coaches. Some suggest that keeping score in kids’ games puts too much emphasis on winning or losing and takes away from the real goal of youth sports, fun and development.
This brutal and horrible event is taken so lightly to the extent that it is described as taking only two hours and conveniently allows the villages to return home “for the noon dinner.” Author Roger Atwood states in his article, “Scholars now understand that the human sacrifices that once shocked the Spaniards were not conceived as public horror or punishment, but rather as reenactments of Aztec society's own creation” (28). What at first seems to be a boring story of a farming community and past time activity in a public square quickly changes into an act of horror as the crowd stones Mrs. Hutchinson with stones gathered by the village boys. To the villagers described in “The Lottery,”
In the story of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, author tells about the story of the lottery that it has been doing every year. They do the lottery as a tradition that they must do in summer time. They do the lottery right before harvest season, and they must to kill the winner of the lottery to make their harvest better. They do this tradition for years and years without any question why they need to kill someone for that reason. People think that this tradition makes them becoming madness because this tradition costs the life of people.