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Conflict And Tone In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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“The Lottery” is a short story that was written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about a woman that lives in a village named Tessie Hutchinson and how she was selected in a lottery like tradition that the village has had for many years and none of the citizens from this village have ever questioned how it works or why it is that they participate in it and why they are forced too. Shirley Jackson’s use of conflict and tone are to help the theme in “The Lottery”. The conflict of a short story is defined as a problem or struggle between two opposing forces. “The Lottery” involves external conflict. For example this external conflict is between Tessie Hutchinson and her thoughts on the lottery, and the people that didn’t question this tradition .Another conflict that is involved is internal conflict for example when it was time for tessie to draw a slip from the box “she hesitated for a while” this is basically because she didn’t want to be involved or chosen by the lottery. The tone used in “The Lottery starts off as a very nice and peaceful tone day and shows that everyone seems to be fine, then later on in the story it starts to turn into a disturbing or shocking tone because of what’s about to take place an how the people seem to be fine with it. Textual evidence from the story is how their day was a “clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of a full summer day, the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green”(1). To the members of the village

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