At a time when basic religious beliefs and traditions were being questioned by academia, author Shirley Jackson penned a poignant attack against those who blindly accepted values and traditions in her short story, “The Lottery.” The Lottery is presented as an event that has always occurred throughout the region's history without any opposition. Nonchalantly, the entire village commits homicide at the finale. Finally, aspects of the traditional lottery evolved without notice or were forgotten by the villagers. Within “The Lottery,” author Shirley Jackson embeds the theme of blindly accepting traditions as illustrated by the actions of the villagers.
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is one of the most well-written and popular short stories because it has a strong sense of foreshadowing, setting and theme. The first element that contributes greatly to the making of a good short story is foreshadowing. For instance, in the beginning of “The Lottery”, children were putting stones in their pockets, foreshadowing the stoning ceremony. The names in “The Lottery” also implies what is about to happen. With names such as Graves and Delacroix, it signals graveyards and death, hinting at the sacrificial killing of Tessie.
Sacrifice is an inevitable element of our world, exacerbated by the greed and rapid expansion in the population of humans. The idea is relevant to the themes and events surrounding the plot of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a romantic, feminist novel by Zora Neale Hurston. The protagonist Janie grows up disparaged, as her mother left her at birth with her grandmother. Janie learns of love, self-respect, expression, and ultimately sacrifice as she goes from partner to partner after her grandmother’s passing. Sacrifice and the implied investment of a sacrifice reveal much of the deeper meaning of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and the movie, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, tells a tale of dystopian communities where they have to choose a sacrifice by drawing their names and having them to kill to survive to make sure they have enough food for their communities. Even though both stories are violent and cruel, they both explain the purpose of a dystopian life. First, some similarities between both stories, “The Lottery” and “The Hunger Games” are that they are both in a rural community and that their children are involved with this yearly event too. Everyone is dressed poorly and their communities both don’t have enough food.
When sacrifices are made, a goal is accomplished by the person sacrificing the object and a life is affected by the sacrifice made which could be seen in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, and Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor. In The Lottery, a community of people stand with their traditions even though it harms their society. In The Veldt, the children sacrifice someone they should love and replace it by a room they love more. In Good Country People, Hulga, a mid age, deformed, and independent, woman sacrifices something she needs for a person she thinks she knows.
On June 26 of 1948, Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, made its first appearance in an issue of The New Yorker. Jackson was surprised by the substantial amount of backlash she received in regards to her harrowing writing that manifests the rituals of human sacrifice. The story takes place in a small town on an ordinary summer morning. The villagers assemble at the town square for the annual lottery, where one of the villagers will be randomly chosen to sacrifice themselves to the gods of a fertility religion. The villagers believe that a human sacrifice must take place in June to ensure that a bountiful harvest was ahead of them.
In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “Bloodflowers” by W.D. Valgardson, the characters live in a dystopian world and follow annual tradition. The people in “The Lottery” gather together yearly and Mr. Summers conducts the event called the lottery. At this event, the citizens draw out slips of paper and the person who draws out the marked slip is sacrificed through stoning. Similarly, in “Bloodflowers” the citizens choose a “king” each year and the “king” is flourished with presents and is even offered a women. Although he is presented with all the gifts, the people in town murder the “king” at the end of the year.
The Effects of Suffering on a 12 year Old Boy “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars” - Khalil Gibran. Throughout Night, Elie Wiesel copes with the agony of the Holocaust first hand. Suffering by definition is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. In Wiesel’s Night, suffering forces people to make inhumane decisions, shatters hope, and destroys self identity. Suffering forces people to be put in bad places where they feel pressured to eventually make inhumane decisions.
The purpose of the lottery is to continue the old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order for a harvest. The scapegoat is chosen at random and then stoned to death by his/her companions. Although “The Lottery” reflects an event from the past, Jackson shows that many of the actions of the town resemble the tribulations that ensue in today’s society. To begin with, like the villagers in the story, our society also partakes in valuing tradition.
Although many who read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” believe it to be about a crazy town viciously slaughtering an innocent woman for the ritualized sacrifice to bring them a feastful harvest of corn, it very clearly demonstrates Jackson’s hope to educate readers of the horrors of society’s blind following using social conformity, tradition, and general acceptance. The story starts at around 10 o’clock a.m. on June 27, and children are stacking rocks. The whole town gathers around and picks one piece of paper per family, out of an old black box.
In both short stories, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there is an idea of sacrifice. The ideas of sacrifice in both stories compare but also contrast; someone is sacrificed for the happiness of the majority, but in each story happiness is achieved in different ways. In neither community does everyone necessarily agree with what is going on but they have to do what is best for everyone. In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” the town chooses to sacrifice one child for the happiness of the whole community.
Stories of Tobias Wolff’s Bullets in the Brain and Timmy Reed’s Birds and Other Things We placed In Our Hearts has similarities and differences. Wolff’s Bullets in the Brain first appeared in The New Yorker on Sept 25, 1995 while Reed’s Birds and Other Things We placed In Our Hearts is publish in a web jounal Necessary Fiction on January 2014.
The short story “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson. This story takes place in a small village where everybody knows each other. In this story all the villagers gather around town for their annual lottery. Everyone in the village is compelled to follow this tradition even if the outcome ends up with someone dying. In “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses conflict, theme, and irony to develop this suspenseful short story.
The short story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, the plot in the story that it only gives people an account of drawing lots to determine the winner who shall be stoned to death for harvest. However, we get a deep impression of the characters and their fate after reading the story. Jackson indicated a prevalent theme, the indirect of characterization and using symbolism and irony to modify this horror story. The Allegorical story of “ The Lottery” is often regarded as a satire of human behavior and social institutions, and exemplifies some of the central themes of Jackson’s fiction, including the victimization of the individual by society, the tendency of people to be cruel, and the presence of evil in everyday life.
The extreme tradition in Shirley Jackson's, "The Lottery," produces no positive difference, but rather only a negative difference. The traditional belief upheld by the agrarian village in Jackson's story is human sacrifice, which aims at satisfying their gods so that they may have a copious harvest. When the lottery session determined that Tessie Hutchinson won the lottery, she said in response, "it isn't fair." (Reading Literature and Writing Argument) Tessie believed prior to winning the lottery that she was going to lose; however, she became a victim of her overconfidence.
