Shirley Jackson Diction

Many people go through their lives celebrating traditions year after year because it is what they were trained to do by others; during Christmas they kiss underneath mistletoe, during Thanksgiving they carve turkey’s, and come Halloween they adorn costumes as they beg for candy throughout their neighborhoods. While these traditional rituals, on the surface, appear to be harmless enjoyment, there are secrets hidden behind each of them, buried through years of alterations, omissions, and additions which can prove harmful to one’s soul and are therefore worthy of investigation. Similarly, Shirley Jackson brilliantly writes a terrifying short story, offering an awakening to her audience as she takes them into a ghastly village, hidden behind a euphoric façade, where ignorance is not always bliss. Written and appearing in the New Yorker in 1948, the story represents the average person who is programed to stroll through traditions, blindly adhering to rituals, of which carry no real meaning, beyond habit, to the characters. Brilliantly authored, as Jackson meticulously chooses to use informal concrete diction as she creates a setting which represents an everyday Early American town, engaging her readers into the characters ordinarily free mannered conversations through the unshifting and impartial tone of an objective third-person point-of-view narrator, and by using syntax to perfectly progress the story which creates shifts in mood ranging from serenity to disbelief, the eerie tale draws readers in with an exceptional sense of suspense.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the literary elements of foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony reveal the author’s perspective on the theme of the dangers of blindly following traditions without inquiring about their