Shirley Jackson Influence

How Do Relationships Define Us? Relationships will represent us. It can interpret us either in a good or bad way. Connections we had or have with others may lead us to be how we are afterwards or including during that relationship with our significant others. In Etgar Keret’s, “What of the Goldfish Would You Wish For?,” Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery,” and “Without Title,” by Diane Glancy, demonstrates how relationships with others can define us.

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery: Through the Looking Glass of Feminism Shirley Jackson is greatly renowned for her controversial short story “The Lottery”. This American female author was admired by many for her innovative methodology regarding American Gothic literature.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a short story about a small town with an unexpected dark tradition. When you first start reading you associate the lottery as a good thing. As you read on the story slowly starts eluding to a darker outcome. The further you read, the more you get foreshadowing lending a sense of impending doom. When the story comes to its conclusion that the one selected in the lottery is going to be stoned to death, you have the questions come to mind of, why do they do this, to what end?

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson, a popular writer in the twentieth century who is widely acclaimed for her stories and novels of the supernatural. Jackson was born on December 14, 1919 in San Francisco, California. She wanted to be a writer from an early age and while she grew up, she kept a journal of her writings that revealed her curiosity in the supernatural and superstition. Later on in her life, her family moves from California to New York where in 1935 she starts her college life at the University of Rochester. She then decided to withdraw for a year to teach herself how to write.

In 1948, when the New Yorker published Shirley Jacksons piece, “The Lottery,” it sparked outrage among readers, but could arguably be known as one of her most famous pieces of writing. In this short story, Shirley Jackson used literally elements such as imagery, diction, and symbolism to foreshadow the negative and harsh ending of the story; the harsh ending that sparked such outrage by society in the 1940’s. One of the main ways Jackson foreshadows the ending and true meaning of her short story, “The Lottery,” is through symbolism. Jackson uses the color black throughout the story.

Traditions have been around for as long as we have been on the earth. As humans we don’t like change, so having a ritual that we repeat every year is the sense of normalcy we crave. People will go through the same hurtful cycle, even though they know it’s wrong or not working, simply because it is all they know. Unlike common belief, giving up harmful practices is not the same as giving up culture. People hold onto tradition because they feel that giving it up is taking them away from where they came from.

Absence of Fear “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear” (Nelson Mandela). Have you ever really thought about the things you fear and why you fear them? Recently I have read some texts that have gotten me thinking about this quote. This quote has a lot to compare to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

Personal response An Ironical and descriptive story name “The Lottery” written by “Shirley Jackson”. This anecdote is written and published in the same month of June. This story was basically written to make the readers reflect on the past belief of America. Her aim was not just to consider America as issue but all over the world and their problems. To give a glance of the historical issue she, the author has choose America as a case study.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and David Herbert Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” are two fascinating and powerful short stories. Although both of them are fiction stories, they depict an unfortunate reality of our society. Jackson’s “The Lottery” speaks about a yearly event, which consists in randomly killing a person in the village and Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” speaks about the relationship between a mother and her son, based on a one-sided form of love. Both short stories show many similarities in terms use of situational irony, foreshadowing and symbolism, and the many themes the stories revolve around.

The short story, “The Lottery” was written and published in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War. During World War II, there was a system set up called the draft in which the government chooses groups of young men to fight at random. This was very scary and chosen at random for the young men. The draft, in a few ways, refers a lot to “The Lottery” and Shirley Jackson was surely influenced by the recent war in the making of this short story. It is a totally random and scary for the individuals called in both instances.