Analysis Of The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

The author Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery;” a village conducts an inhumane lottery to pick out one individual. The quote unquote “winner,” in this case, Mrs. “Tessie” Hutchinson, gets stoned heartlessly to death by all the 300 villagers, including her kin. This lottery began as a ceremony long ago to choose a villager to be sacrificed to Earth in exchange for a large harvest. Now, it became an annual tradition, a tradition that is too deep to be changed. According to the most elderly man in the village, “Old Man Warner:” “‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’” (p.22 l.260-261) The first villagers created the lottery to acquire a heavy harvest.

Further in the book, the townspeople continuously refer to Hester’s child, Pearl, as a ‘devil child,’ constantly connecting her to her mothers sin. These two characters are constantly treated with injustice and unfairness because of one sin committed years

In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing to hint at the true purpose of the town meeting and the lottery. For example, when seemingly gathering stones playfully, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys still follow his example… Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix … eventually made a great pile of stones in the corner of the square.” (Jackson) This quotation shows that the kids seem like they are gathering rocks for fun. It looks like they are just having fun since they are kids and that what you would expect. Therefore this shows that instead of the rock gathering being fun and innocent, it actually shows that they are gathering them for something terrible to happen. Jackson’s

Abigail believed that Proctor actually loved her and she waited every night for him. She was brainwashed to think he would leave his wife for her. The witchcraft accusation came from the beginning of the story when Abigail and the girls were dancing naked in the woods and chanting. She made false accusations that people in the village were worshipping the devil to cover what she had done. Many lives were taken but Abigail had no empathy for anyone who was hanged.

To begin, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes pathos throughout his writing to imprint the importance of individual conscience into the reader 's mind. Hawthorne begins the book by having the reader pity the main character, Hester Prynne, as she is a young, husbandless, mother in a society that shames her for her unfortunate circumstances: “haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon” (Hawthorne, 53). The consistent misfortune of Prynne evokes emotion in the reader and stresses the weight of her decisions. Prynne manages her way through such a hostile society -“Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly on your bosom” (Hawthorne, 188)- in a way that is metaphorically applicable to the real world, allowing the reader to truly connect and understand the character for who they are. This connection adheres with the reader, whether it be conscious or not, and affects their day to day life, changing how readers view situations given to them ranging in

In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing when the children are collecting stones from the river and putting them into piles. It hints that something bad is going to happen because it is unusual for boys to be grabbing stones and randomly put them into a pile. For example, while the towns people were getting ready for the lottery the narrator states, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example,selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix, eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys.” (Jackson). This quotation shows that the boys in the village are finding the smoothest and roundest stones and putting them into a big pile. But the reason is still

When the second drawing was held only among the Hutchinson’s family, Tessie gets the same piece of paper with the dot and is stoned to death. Jackson uses imagery and irony, as well as symbolism to make us aware of the custom, and violence and tradition as the themes of this short story. One literary device which is used by Jackson in this story is imagery. Imagery is defined as concepts or expressions that appeal to the reader’s feelings. Jackson uses vivid imagery to illustrate the start of her story.

In this essay I will explore these examples to determine whether this thesis is true. From the moment she conceived Pearl, Hester confessed that she had commited adultery. At frst, the townspeople looked down on Hester as just a living reminder of sin. Nevertheless, once Hester began doing charity work, “Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them”(87.) The people began to notice her more as the person she is, rather than what the scarlet “A” defined her as “The letter was the symbol of her calling.

“The Lottery”, a horror story created by Shirley Jackson, is about a moderate sized village that sacrifices innocent villagers in a forsaken lottery for the sake of tradition, and for their belief of good fortune that will arise. This story presents a lot of themes that relate to the real world, and these themes revolve around the negatives of society such as shunning, and forced indoctrination. One theme demonstrated was the theme of tradition versus progress. Tradition is not always right because it prevents society from progressing forward. Shirley Jackson vividly presents that theme through the characters’ malicious actions.

Stoning also appears specifically in the religious texts of all three Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The villagers are portrayed as simple people throughout the story until the last passage when they become savage beasts carrying out an age-old ritual. When the villagers brutally stone the citizen who "won" the lottery, it displays how their moral values are decimated to the point where they now are cold, heartless beings, no different than the inanimate stones they use for the deadly act every June (Cassel,

A devil, accordingly, did for her many services.Her master blamed her for not carrying out the ashes, and a devil afterwards would clear the hearth of ashes for her. Her master sending her to drive out the hogs that sometimes broke into their field, a devil would scare the hogs away and make her laughed to see how it feared them. She confessed that she had murdered a child and committed uncleanness both with men and with devils. In the time of her imprisonment, the famous Mr. Smith was at great pains to promote her conversion from the devil to God, and she was, by the best observers, judged very penitent both before her execution and after it, and she went out of the world with comfortable hopes of mercy from God through the merit of our Savior. Being asked what she built her hopes upon, she answered, "Upon these words: 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, ' and these: 'There is a fountain set open for sin and uncleanness '.

n Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, the author constructs a story full of symbolism, permitted horror, and a traditionalized ritual that serves as a front for an evil purpose, and ultimately reveals a towns ignorance in blindly following tradition. In small towns like the one in “The Lottery,” it is customary to uphold traditions. It functions as a way to bring together generations of community and family. The town is busy preparing for their tradition called the lottery. Children run around finding stones and placing them in the town square, and everyone is talking about a strange black box and how ratty it has become but will not be replaced because it is a tradition.