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Shirley Jackson The Lottery Quote Analysis

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Winning is one of the greatest feelings, whether it is in a sport or just a life goal. Not everything in life is what is seems. But old traditions are not always best to follow. In the Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. Shirley Jackson starts off with a little village coming together in the main plaza for the town’s lottery. Soon, the mayor/organizer, Mr Summers, of the lottery comes out with a black box and puts it right in the center. Everyone goes up, takes a slip of paper and is told by Mr. Summers to not look at their paper. Soon, the main character is introduced, Mrs. Hutchinson. However, the mood starts to change as the reader finds what the lottery is all about and why winning is losing and losing is winning. Shirley Jackson’s …show more content…

“It had a black spot on it,the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with heavy pencil in the coal-company office.” (Pg. 96) When people think of a lottery, it is automatically that everyone thinks of money. But this lottery is not something anyone wants to win. The black dot is the destiny of whoever wins, their fate has already been set. “‘It isn't fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” (Pg. 96) Mrs. Hutchinson, the main character, had the unlucky fate of winning the lottery. The final sentence of the story describes what the winner of the lottery wins, death. And the black dot decides who is the one to die July 27, every year.

Without a doubt, Shirley Jackson uses black box, stones, and the black dot on the winning lottery ticket to show one thing, that in life, winning can be losing, and losing can also be winning. Shirley Jackson uses the tricks of foreshadowing and using symbols to tell what will happen in the story. Since the kids collected stones, the box was paint black, and the black dot all show one thing, that no one want to win the lottery, and whoever does, isn’t winning money, they are winning a one way ticket to a

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