Themes And Imagery In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson. The story commences with a vivid description of the summer day in the town, giving us the idea that the day will be good. When the lottery begins, families begin to draw slips of paper from the black box. Finally, when Bill Hutchinson withdrew the slip of paper with the black dot, his wife Tessie starts yelling that it wasn 't fair. When the second drawing was held only among the Hutchinson’s family, Tessie gets the same piece of paper with the dot and is stoned to death. Jackson uses imagery and irony, as well as symbolism to make us aware of the custom, and violence and tradition as the themes of this short story. One literary device which is used by Jackson in this story is imagery. Imagery is defined as concepts or expressions that appeal to the reader’s feelings. Jackson uses vivid imagery to illustrate the start of her story. With this in mind, irony, a technique that involves surprising contradictions or contrasts, takes place in the story for the most part showing us that this story in fact has twists and turns that might be outrageous to some of the people from this era. For example, when the day 's described as “clear and sunny” it 's ironic because it ends with the “brutal death” of a person. The way Jackson described the day made us think it was going to be enjoyable but it showed us otherwise. Another example would be Mr. Summers’s name. His persona leads us to believe that he 's the kind man in the story