What Is The Lottery Short Story

The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson takes place in a small New England village. It is in summer, to be more specific, 27th June. It is a clear and sunny day. From the start of the short story, there is no clear reason why the village conducts the lottery. There are some villagers that are not keen to participate in it. The real reason behind the lottery is slowly revealed as the story progresses. Jackson writes the story from a third-person narrator. Therefore, there is no access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters. With action and dialogue, villagers express themselves. The story is about a culture of the village, which is called “The Lottery”. Before reading the story, the main idea is about people winning prizes at a lottery.

Summers and Mr. Graves prepares the slips of papers and mixes them up in the black box. Mr. Summers locks the box in his coal company. They make a list of all the families and households in the village so that the lottery can run smoothly. One of the villagers, Tessie Hutchinson forgets today is the day of the lottery and hastily joins the crowd. Her family are already at the square before her. Mr. Summers checks again if anyone is absent in the crowd, several people say, “Dunbar. Dunbar.” Mrs. Dunbar volunteers to draw the lottery because she does not have an older son to help her. Mr. Summers proceeds with asking, “Watson boy drawing this year?”. He also makes sure Old Man Warner is at the square too. He announces the list of rules for the lottery and begins the lottery process. Each of the villager take turns to draw a piece of paper from the black box. Bill Hutchison draws a paper with a black dot on it. He is the head of his household. The second round of the lottery, Bill’s wife, Tessie Hutchinson draws a paper with a black dot and protests saying, “It wasn’t fair.” because she does not have enough family members to do the lottery. The villagers begin throwing stones at