Salem Massachusetts And The Lottery: Literary Analysis

The story of “ The Lottery ” by Shirley Jackson is a very surprising story especially towards the end. It causes great consternation and shock when we learn that the winner of the lottery - Tessie Hutchinson, does not win an award, rather finds herself stoned to death. This somewhat shows the role that superstition played years ago. It was widely prevalent and as we progressed in terms of science and technology, we have come to break apart from such harmful traditions. It is precisely due to these superstitions, often many an innocent life has been taken without just cause. This is what we encounter in this tragic story. From the beginning of the story, the author presents a lively outlook of the village life and the different people who are

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. Jackson satirizes many social issues within the plot of The Lottery, including the reluctance of people to abandon obsolete traditions, ideas, practices, rules, and laws. The superstitious notions tied to tradition provokes the participants to carry out certain customs and set morals aside in order to safeguard a fabricated future. Jackson’s piece embodies underlying attributes of human sacrifice and rituals similar to events that are prevalent in American History, such as the Salem Witch Trials. In colonial Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693, a series and hearings and prosecutions of people allegedly performing witchcraft took place. A simple rumor precipitated a widespread hysteria, leading to approximately 200 accusations and 20 deaths. Both The Lottery and Salem Witch Trials exemplify how the American culture is essentially

“The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts off with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers holds the lottery. Once everyone gathers, every family draws a slip of paper out of an old black box, and the family with the black mark on their paper gets picked. After that, each family member older than 3 years of age re-draws a slip of paper again and this time, the person with the black mark on their paper gets picked as the “lucky winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery, with her reward is being stoned to death. Why would such a cruel event take

Traditions have been sought after and passed on for generations; with no questions asked, whether humane or not, traditions are hard to break and diminish as they are often what a culture or community stands for.

The stories "The Lottery" and "The Hunger Games" are very similar to one another. Both stories show fear, sacrifice, and violence in some way. The government is corrupt and is not willing to stop deadly traditions that have gone on for too long. These traditions should have never started in the first place. In "The Lottery," citizens fear that they will no longer be able to grow crops as a result of not having this deadly game. Carol Cleveland, who wrote Contemporary Literary Criticism, stated "not until the final moments of the action does it become clear that the “winner” of the lottery will be stoned by the rest of the village" (Cleveland). In "The Hunger Games," the government wants to put fear in the hearts of all of the citizens that dare to disobey. Neither government wants to end the laws that have killed so many people. In the stories "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, and "The Hunger Games," by Suzanne Collins, both societies have a dysfunctional view of life, use other's fear as a weapon, and use violence as a way to solve problems.

In the short story, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, the characters have a different type of normal. June 27, lottery day, marks the day of the death of an innocent person. As I read this story, I was very puzzled. This story made me think about the death of a person, whether be young or old, liked or disliked. The death on lottery day was thought to be normal in these towns, but it was not normal to me. This tradition is gruesome and made me uncomfortable that this could be normal to anyone, fictional or real.

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.

Anticipation mingled with uncertainty, better known, as suspense, is an inevitable quality of human nature. Suspense is occasionally a great mechanism. It allows the author to keep the readers alert and leads up to the element of surprise, which is a successful writing tool that makes a story more enjoyable. The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson builds up suspense through the foreshadowing of a horrible moment, creating a character that stands out from the crowd all while withholding the true nature of the story.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is an account of a tradition gone awry. In this short story the villagers of this town have a tradition where they have a “lottery” to see who gets stoned to death. The characterization and symbolism used in the story makes the reader feel as if society has crumbled with the inhumane tradition that ultimately lost its meaning. Throughout the story, Jackson uses characterization and symbolism to imply a message to society about the meaning of tradition. Through the use of characterization and symbolism Jackson establishes that blindly following traditions can be hazardous

There are many unmistakable parallels between the two-short story’s “The Lottery” and “Barn Burning.” “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson and takes place in a small town in America. The lottery is an annual ritual where all the families get together, the man of each family takes a paper with the possibility of that being marked which then means someone in the family will die. That is to say, a villager winning the lottery results in the other villagers stoning he or she to death. William Faulkner wrote the short story “Barn Burning.” Not to mention, the story starts off in a courtroom because Abner Snopes burned down the property of Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris is landowner, who is left with a burned barn and no legal option. Snopes is advised to leave the country because the court can’t find enough evidence to sentence him. His son Sarty Snopes chooses to warn the owner. “Barn Burning” offers a helpful picture of how Faulkner sees the economics of the postbellum South, where the poor whites remain the underclass rivals of black sharecroppers (Pierce).

#1 New York Times Bestselling author Vi Keeland once stated, “Fear does not stop death, it stops life.” A boundless collection of interpretations represent Keeland’s quotation. Yet, only one remains relevant to the topic at hand: in the events that led to the witch trials of 1692, fear posed as a major barricade in Salem Village, Massachusetts, hindering the Puritans’ ability to pursue everyday life. The Salem Witch Trials are one of our nation’s most compellingly intricate, though tragic, phenomenons. Immersed in a dangerously-religious, hysterical atmosphere, a group of young, attention-seeking girls behaved as if cursed by a demonic spirit. Sequentially, they accused innocent Puritan people for bewitching them, and a series of court hearings

Many people would die to win the lottery; in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you would do anything NOT to win this lottery. This annual lottery reveals the negative aspects of this town’s Tradition, Savagery, Barbarism, and cold-heartedness. In this paper I will show why this town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because of the accepting wickedness that can be shown.

The book, Death in Salem, by Diane E. Foulds, is the story of the private lives behind the 1692 witch hunt. Death in Salem focuses on the accusers, the victims, the clergy, the judges, and the elite. There were more than one hundred and fifty accusations that year and twenty were executed. Death in Salem will make you look at the Salem witch trials of 1692 in a completely different aspect.

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 two stories have a theme that talks about respect - respect for individuality in Reed’s story and respect for person’s unlikeable traits in Wolff’s. In Reed’s story, the lead character learn to respect and accept his love despite the fact that they have different hearts. Also, he learns to accept her even though he knows that she would never be satisfied. In Wolff’s story, he emphasizes the importance of giving respect during the time when he enumerates the memories that Anders did not remember. He uttered “Anders did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.”

Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are similar in many ways, but different in others too. There is illness and death in both, and the time to choose life or death arises in both plots. One character chooses to live and the other has no choice, but drives himself mad before he meets Death. The human existence is approached differently in the two texts, the main character of the separate texts differ on how they each live their lives. One is adventurous and the other is a “stick to the plan” kind of man and lives the way he thinks society wants him to live. The endings are quite similar, both end with death, and with death comes with realization of how the living are when facing death, they are fake and pretend quite often. Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are similar in many