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Use Of Irony In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. It is about an annual lottery in which the winner shall be executed. Problems arise when the winner does not agree with the decision. It all goes downhill from there. Shirley Jackson uses literary devices such as symbolism, tone and irony which make the story more detailed and entertaining.
Irony is used plenty throughout the story. Dramatic irony happens to be when the characters of the story know something yet we don't find out till later on in the story. We can pretty much say the story begins with dramatic irony without reading much of it. Usually when we hear or see the word Lottery, we think of some sort of price. Yet in this story the characters understanding of lottery is completely different from ours. The Lottery refers to an annual event in which the people of the village gather on to have this lottery. The one to get chosen as the winner will be killed by everyone else. Yet the people of the village act so normal knowing that at the end of that same day someone will die. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer …show more content…

Symbolism is defined as the identification of a noun such as a person, place or thing, but according to the story the symbols include the lottery itself, contraptions used in the lottery and even the people of the town. “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago.”(pg. 1 “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson) This text from the context emphasizes how the lottery has been a traditional behavior for these villagers that have been passed on with origins from the past. The lottery itself symbolizes the way their culture has been set up to be, death, an execution between people who once “lived under the same roof’’ and considering the lottery as some sort of normal

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