Truth In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Third, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing to develop horror in this short story. In the second paragraph of this short story the narrator talks about children going around to collect rocks and making large piles of them. The reader at first thinks this is an innocent child’s play, but the children are actually preparing the rocks to stone the chosen victim. One of the leaders of the lottery, Mr. Graves, his name represents death. Because you dig graves for dead bodies to bury them.

Shirley Jackson is a novelist and short story writer that decided to write a very interesting suspense, called, “The Lottery.” Jackson used foreshadowing in many places throughout the play to make the audience wonder why they hints were there. For example on page seven she has Bill say to his wife, “‘After’? Don’t you understand? Suppose--- Suppose---.

“The Lottery” is about a town that kills people off as part of a fertility ritual by a lottery system. The conflict is hard to pinpoint since the main character, Tessie Hutchinson shows up late to the lottery in the middle of the story. Tessie can be seen as a representative of the whole town. Tessie speaks her mind and voices thoughts that others have. For example, when she screams “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” before she is killed (245).Other people have also voiced their opinions about the lottery.

The main conflict in The Lottery is between Tessie Hutchinson and the rest of the town. According to Shirley Jackson, “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villages moved in on her.” “It isn’t fair,” she said. The rest of the town people disagree with her and says everyone took the same chance. One of Shirley Jackson’s conflicts is between the character’s dark actions and the picture-perfect setting.

However, they both felt they where right in the stands they took , which changed the way they viewed the world. In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, their was a village that had a tradition of killing the person who won The Lottery. Tessie Hutchinson was how ever the person who won and that means she would be stoned to death by the people in her village. In the text “A stone hit her on the head”.

People have always had an overwhelming desire to be accepted by others, and will even adopt the morals of their peers in order to conform to society. In the story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson depicts the danger of ignorance and the extent in which it influences society. Not only is this applicable to the story, but is also relevant to the real world and historical events such as witch hunts. In the short story “The Lottery,” a group of villagers join together each year for their tradition.

Her statement reveals her belief that the lottery is unfair and the process was not done correctly. However, the other villagers view the lottery as an essential part of their cultural heritage and respond to Tessie's objections with, "Be a good sport, Tessie" (Jackson 7). This response highlights their cultural background and the importance placed on tradition and

This is an interesting story of how the whole town would get together for “the lottery” each year and the families would come out and pick numbers till everyone in the whole town got their number and it goes on and we did not know till the very last second whoever “won” the lottery was stoned to death and then the rest of town went back onto their own lives till the next year. Many explications for this story but, one to be focused on is the deception throughout the whole story. There many ways to explain this idea even though it was a short story. You would assume it would be a nice, calm and happy story since it started out with “the morning was clear and sunny, with fresh warmth of a full summer day;” (373) how could a person possibly think

The purpose of the lottery is to continue the old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order for a harvest. The scapegoat is chosen at random and then stoned to death by his/her companions. Although “The Lottery” reflects an event from the past, Jackson shows that many of the actions of the town resemble the tribulations that ensue in today’s society. To begin with, like the villagers in the story, our society also partakes in valuing tradition.

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

“Sacrificing Others for Plentiful Crops” Human sacrifice is a part of history. Some religions use sacrifice as a way to remove sin or to ask their god for some sort of help. In “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, human sacrifice is used. Through various literary devices, such as setting, symbols, and irony, Jackson reveals the theme that humans can be so cruel to others without any extra thought.

Many people would die to win the lottery; in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you would do anything NOT to win this lottery. This annual lottery reveals the negative aspects of this town’s Tradition, Savagery, Barbarism, and cold-heartedness. In this paper I will show why this town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because of the accepting wickedness that can be shown. Why does the town follow this foolish tradition? Throughout “The Lottery” the narrator tells that the people do not remember how the lottery began, and that some of the older people believe the lottery has changed over the years, that now people just want to get it over with as fast as possible.

Imagine a society where killing somebody for the sake of a tradition is acceptable. In the short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson describes an ordinary village with normal people, but as the story progress the details of their yearly practice known as “the lottery” unravels to be more disturbing. The author subverts the readers’ expiations by persuading the reader into assuming “the lottery” is a ordinary tradition until unusual details and the behavior of the characters come into place. In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.

Although many who read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” believe it to be about a crazy town viciously slaughtering an innocent woman for the ritualized sacrifice to bring them a feastful harvest of corn, it very clearly demonstrates Jackson’s hope to educate readers of the horrors of society’s blind following using social conformity, tradition, and general acceptance. The story starts at around 10 o’clock a.m. on June 27, and children are stacking rocks. The whole town gathers around and picks one piece of paper per family, out of an old black box.

On June 26 of 1948, Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, made its first appearance in an issue of The New Yorker. Jackson was surprised by the substantial amount of backlash she received in regards to her harrowing writing that manifests the rituals of human sacrifice. The story takes place in a small town on an ordinary summer morning. The villagers assemble at the town square for the annual lottery, where one of the villagers will be randomly chosen to sacrifice themselves to the gods of a fertility religion. The villagers believe that a human sacrifice must take place in June to ensure that a bountiful harvest was ahead of them.