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Not Your Ordinary Lottery Research Paper

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Kalee Von Alvensleben Professor Emily Malsam ENGLISH 50 10/20/17 Not Your Ordinary Lottery In Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, a lottery takes place in a small village where the town gets together for an annual tradition. It's not your normal, everyday lottery; but a lottery where you don't want to be pronounced the winner. In this lottery, if your name gets called, you are chosen to be stone to death. In this short story, the government controls the town with horrible, traumatizing laws. Jackson’s short story feeds readers to believe that the town is living in a perfect society. However, it is actually a plot twist and that they are living in dystopia because the government dehumanizes and controls the town, making them live in fear of change, and having no realization that tradition isn’t always good. …show more content…

The Lottery proves that this dystopian society is sustained through a state that manages and controls almost every detail of the society. For example, Mr. Summers says, “Now, I'll read the names --heads of families first-- and then men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?” (Jackson 3). The villagers have got used to the government diminishing the value of life in humans that they take the ticket without fighting. For instance, Jackson talks about the kids of the village getting out of school, getting prepared and stuffing their pockets with stones. The villagers blind acceptance has made the terrible “crime” of tradition as an ordinary

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