Symbolism And Literary Elements In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Ultimately, the central purpose of an author’s novel is to engross the reader, by writing in a genre and movement that is appropriate the book. Appropriately, Kurt Dinan engages the reader with both a Mystery genre and Postmodernist elements in his novel, Don’t Get Caught. Postmodernists believe that traditional authority is false and corrupt, and the central theme of Don’t Get Caught is that the powerful students play pranks and humiliate the less influential students. There exists a social elite club known as the Chaos Club that plays pranks on the school and faculty, and nobody can figure out the leader of the club is or who the members’ are.

Because McKay turns his country into a person, the offenses against him seem much more personal. He begins the poem by writing, “Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth…” (1-2). Immediately, because McKay morphs America into a person, the reader is able to see that the relationship between the poet and “her” is abusive. It is obvious that America has caused the author of the poem distress and that “she” is constantly looking for ways to make him feel small.

“Send us rain clouds, Grandfather” Leon, one of the characters in this story was visibly essential for Silko to depict the theme (continuity and change). The quote is a clear example of characterization. Leon realized a ritual for Teofilo after he had been found dead under a tree. The ritual was Native American and so the priest of the town was not very happy about

Asif Ali Ruperdra Guha Majumdar, Associate Professor, DU IA Term Paper Semester - IV 19th April 2016 Tragedy of a common man in Mother Courage and Her Children: From the spectacle of Realism In the essay "Tragedy and the Common Man," the author Arthur Miller puts forward a very strong argument in the favor of a common man’s suitability for being the hero of a tragedy. And this argument was based on some common points like, such plays can influence us greatly for they contain various elements like the fear of displacement, the tragedy of the difference between who we are and who we wish to be in this world.

She uses them to her advantage to describe her ideas about human life, and the social situations. The combination leads the readers to understand the story, to the message behind it, to illustrate the themes of human life in the lottery. The way how people behave and conform in a group give the reader the example of the real world. People are murderous, irrational, petty, and generally bad toward one another in the irrationality of superstition because of blindly following tradition. The allegorical figures and symbols are interwoven with each other through the event, place, actions, and even the character

The symbolism can be very difficult to understand, but if a reader observes the text very carefully, he or she can understand what is trying to be symbolized. Poe loved to add symbolism behind his characters (“Edgar Allan Poe”). He would combine the physical and intangible traits of the characters and make the readers dig deep to discover what the characters are trying to portray in the story (“Edgar Allan Poe”). In “The Black Cat,” symbolism arises from one of the main characters in the story: Pluto. A reader needs to keep in mind that when Pluto is introduced into the story, the narrator had already began to become very delusional because of his alcohol addiction.

Stories with a little bit of edge but a major symbolic meaning are the type of stories in which people are entertained. In the story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he uses imagery, allegories, and symbols to not only entertain his audience but to teach them a life lesson. This story is one where you have to dig a little deeper to really reveal the true meaning that Hawthorne is trying to portray. I believe the symbolic meaning of this story is that we all have evil in our hearts and are all victims of it.

The most brilliant controversial works of art are often banned and kept hidden from the lives of young children, adolescences and sometimes adults. Mark Twain’s notorious ‘Huckleberry Finn’ uses literature as an incredible tool in addressing certain aspects of the society. This provokes a troubling yet satisfying tension between the reader and the narrator. Mark Twain represents the societal crisis, racism, in a factious novel by illustrating the issue of racism in a way that portrays reality as infinitely more horrifying.

¨Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue¨ ,by Jack Woodford, describes how characterization occurs. There are many way that authors create and describe the characters for their stories. In “ The Cask of Amontillado¨, ¨Thank you M 'am¨, and ¨The Most dangerous game¨ the character Montresor, Mrs. Jones, and Zaroff by the use of speech, action, or appearance. In The Cask of Amontillado, Thank you Mam, and The Most dangerous game the author uses characters speech to develop the character personality.

Edward Albee is often termed as a controversial playwright, and rightly so since his plays intend to wake the readers from their slumber to the world running amuck around them. Albee strives to peel the layers of illusion in his work and in doing so; he uncovers a picture tainted to an extent that it serves as a mirror to the contemporary society. One such play that speaks volume is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – A play that throws light at relationships, that shining on the outside but rotten to the core. Primarily attributed to debunking the illusion-reality of the couples in the play, Albee also portrays the truth of such relationships in the contemporary society.

Matthew Rebhorn’s analysis argues that ‘Benito Cereno’ offers both an ‘inside narrative’ to be analyzed, as well as a guide on how to properly read analytically (157). Melville is using our hunger to understand the truth as a tool to display the negative effects of such an appetite, like Delano’s quest to understand the mysterious intentions of Cereno blinds him to the reality of the situation aboard the ship, in this sense, he traps the reader in this ambiguity in order to guide the reader out of it (157-8). Melville uses language to tangle and subvert meaning, challenging our “logocentric reading practices” and highlighting the “[in]adequacy of rational discourse” (Rebhorn, 158-9). ‘Benito Cereno’ discredits an objectivist reading practice, and replaces it with what Rebhorn identifies as an embodied reading practice. (161).

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", the black wooden box functions to set the tone of the story's unexpected outcome, in addition to, elevating the theme of fault in practicing tradition solely because it is so. The box's aesthetic appearance assists the reader in deconstructing a false association with a lottery and a positive outcome. Its surface is coated in black, being not colorful or curious to look at like modern lottery ball machines. This choice of coloring, or rather lack of, is a nod towards Jackson's dark interpretation of a lottery. This darkness is hinted also by Mr. Martin and his son, who are hesitant to approach the vicinity of the box when it is first placed on a stool by Mr. Summers, revealing their fear in what it represents.

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” tells us how the people of the town get together on June twenty seventh every year to perform a ritual that was started back in the day by their ancestors. The children would gather to the town square first and start piling up rocks in a corner. After the children the men would show up and then the women would show up last. Mr. Summers would call each family in alphabetic order to draw a slip of paper from the box, for the ritual. Once everyone had a piece of paper in their hands, they would look at the slips, who ever had the black dot got stoned to death.

Summary: In this short selection by Shirley Jackson, three hundred villagers gather around in the middle of their local postal office and bank in commencement of the lottery. A group of children are told to collect stones for their parents, as they wait for them to call back. Shortly the event then begins. The head of the household in each village family was brought forward.