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Suspenseful Tone In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

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Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” uses specific word choice to convey a suspenseful tone. One of her specific word choices Jackson chose is ¨nervously¨ to interpret how the lottery has affected everybody in the community, both emotionally and physically. An example of this would be the the interaction between Adams and Mr.Summers; Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, “Adams.” A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. “Hi Steve,” Mr. Summers said, and Adams said “Hi Joe.” They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously(29, Jackson). . The type of language used in this scene is formal because the way Mr. Summers greets each character is with great profession and with proper stand. From this we can also interpret what …show more content…

To empathize, the tone given from this scenario is through Shirley Jackson’s diction in which she uses to describe the atmosphere in the interaction between Adams, and Mr. Summers. Now, to furthermore explain, how “nervously”: gives a suspenseful tone/atmosphere and has affected the people in the lottery is by taking a look where Jackson describes the people within the lottery; The people had done it so many times that only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. From this info we can infer that the lottery has been going on for so long that it is slowly affecting the people. Jackson’s diction of “nervously” gives us an insight of how the people in the lottery have slowly been affected, it shows how the people within don’t want to be in the lottery, it shows how tense it gets, and how it changes people like Tessie when she found out she got the paper.An example of this would be watching a movie over and over again, it’ll slowly affect, and change

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