“The Lottery,” a short story written by Shirley Jackson, takes place in a small, simple town. The main characters are Tessi, Bill, Old Man Warner, and Mr. Summers. This town is very strict to tradition. Annually this town holds a “Lottery”, is actually a drawing where people get stoned. Not everyone gets stoned to death. It depends on what paper you draw. They can’t get out of it, they are all forced. A major issue to this story is social conformity, this means that people do something because it seems like everyone else is doing the same thing. Social conformity really hurts people because it blocks people from seeing the real you, this happens basically throughout the entire story.
All the people arrived to the stoning. This scene especially shows social conformity because they know this is wrong, but everyone else goes so they think they have to also. Mrs. Hutchinson said, “And then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came-a-running.” This relates to social conformity because she quickly left her house to go to the townsquare. She only did this because she thought she had to.This also shows that some of the townspeople are used to this
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Just about everything that the villagers did in the story had to do with copying one another. My theme is that social conformity is a senseless behavior that keeps people from seeing the real you. IN all three of my scenes the villagers were doing things they didn’t have to do. They didn’t have to show up to the stoning, but they did. Some people didn’t want to stone Tessie, but they did because that’s what everyone did. Some people may have thought this behaviour was perfectly fine and there was no need for a change. They are 100% wrong. Social conformity isn’t ever okay because it really hurts people because they feel as if they cannot express their true selves without being
But when she arrived at the plantation and she found out she had to like in a tiny little shack, with another girl, and only one bed and a floor mat, everything was very sad, gloomy and nothing was exciting. This shows that the village and the plantation is very different because of the feelings and emotions that go around. Another difference in the story is, the people and respect there, In the village everyone love each other, help, respects, and enjoys each others company. At the plantation everyone hates each other and one one gets along. I know this because at the village everyone was dancing and singing together and they were all getting along and at the plantation it is the exact
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a dramatic and suspenseful short story about a small town that has a strange ritual. The town pulls out papers out of a box, if you pull out a paper with a mark, you are stoned to death. The town is split on whether the lottery should take place or not. Instead of watching others while they are causing harm to people, take action to make sure it does not happen again. Unless the people who disagree with the lottery rebel, they might never be able to overcome this horrible circumstance.
“The Lottery” Interpretive Essay “The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts of with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers, the official, holds the lottery. After that, every family draws out of an old black box, and a certain family gets picked. Out of the certain family, one person gets picked as the unlucky “winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery.
In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a cruel tradition occurs in towns across the nation. Every year, the town gathers and at random chooses a head of the household and a member of that family to be stoned to death. Dave Hutchinson’s life is changed forever when his mother and father, Bill and Tessie Hutchinson, are chosen in the lottery. All the children in the town will grow up to experience different issues with their health and with different perspectives on if the lottery is right or wrong, with Dave at a more of a disadvantage as he was directly affects by the lottery.
“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson is a very suspenseful, yet very shocking short story. This story is set in a small village, on a hot summers day in June. Flowers are blooming, and the towns people are gathering for the lottery, which is a tradition the town does every year. As the reader reads the first paragraph they think this is a happy story. The title also says, “The Lottery” which is a word often used for winning something or receiving a prize.
Jackson plans on taking the audience's’ assumptions to her advantage toward the end of the story, which lures viewers to continue reading her story. Also, another hint in the beginning of the short story indicates the boys in the town filling their pockets with stones. Jackson also signifies the importance to these stones when she informs the readers the boys are protecting a pile of rocks. At first, readers would not notice the significance of these stones, but these stones will return into the reader’s thoughts when the climax arises. Jackson also adds the fact the girls are not participating in the boys’ activity, which could draw lines between men and women in the village.
According to SixMinuteScholar “the internal logic is just that it’s tradition” and nothing else. This shows that tradition is not always the best thing to keep. With a tinge of disagreement and agreement, the middle ground would most likely have the best response in this case. The tradition in the story use to be used in other towns, but most have decided that it was immoral. Tradition within this story was a great way to show exactly why “not fixing what isn’t broke” is not always the best
Both “the lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “first they came” by Martin Niemoller deal with following the crowd can have disastrous consequences. If you follow the crowd sometimes we can get in trouble for someone else. And if someone is doing something stupid and they told you to come or do it with them you can get in trouble for that to. “The lottery” had some sketchy history be hide it. Some people think if you win a lottery you win a prize like money or a new car but not in this story if you win the lottery you win death.
Conformity is a powerful and influential behavior that can drastically affect a society’s circumstances. The morality and wellbeing of the individuals’ in a society are shaped by the everyday traditions and customs of that culture. Shirley Jackson, an award-winning author for her works in horror and mystery, unveils the perturbing effect of conformity on a society and its people in her short story “The Lottery.” In her thought-provoking story, a village situated in a warm area of England prepares to partake in a traditional crop fertility ritual that involves a paper drawing to elect a ‘winner’ who will be stoned to death. The societal conformity to continue this brutal tradition causes the life of a person to be insensitively taken away each
By incorporating dramatic irony into “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson is able to convey a sense of understanding and compassion towards the character. This first instance of dramatic irony is where Tessie is pleading to the town’s people that they were unfair to her husband. “People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly.
“The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts off with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers holds the lottery. Once everyone gathers, every family draws a slip of paper out of an old black box, and the family with the black mark on their paper gets picked. After that, each family member older than 3 years of age re-draws a slip of paper again and this time, the person with the black mark on their paper gets picked as the “lucky winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery, with her reward is being stoned to death.
“The Lottery” is an realism/horror story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about some villagers of a small New England town who follow the tradition of making a lottery every year. When it comes, they like to celebrate it with the correct rules and the correct objects so they can feel more comfortable. Everyone need to take a slip of paper from a small black box, and the paper with a black dot in it means that the family is the winner, then they raffle again; Bill Hutchinson, who was the husband of the protagonist Tessie Hutchinson picked a paper with a black dot in it, that meant that Tessie was the winner of the lottery, then she starts complaining because the drawing was not conducted properly. At the end, the townspeople moved off to a cleared spot outside the town and they begin stoning her to death (Jackson).
Human nature can be characterized as being positive, capable of altruism and goodness which sets humankind apart from savage animals; however, human nature possesses a dark side, namely cruelty, and it is capable of barbarism like any beast. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, cruelty is part of human nature, and the participants of the lottery demonstrate human cruelty through violence towards one another; markedly, by exhibiting desensitization to violence and the acceptance of violence resulting in internal dysfunction which is perpetuated yearly. Participants of the lottery belong to a close-knit community, and every year the community hosts an enigmatic lottery draw. The conclusion of the lottery draw is only mysterious until the outcome
The short story “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson. This story takes place in a small village where everybody knows each other. In this story all the villagers gather around town for their annual lottery. Everyone in the village is compelled to follow this tradition even if the outcome ends up with someone dying. In “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses conflict, theme, and irony to develop this suspenseful short story.
The Lottery The short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson proposes an annual lottery drawing in a little village set in New England. However, unlike any usual lottery, the winner is stoned to death by their fellow townsmen, women and children included. The lottery seems to have been a custom around the area for over seventy years.