Zora Neale Hurston's The Lottery

In the short story Sweat written by Zora Neale Hurston, she tells the story of a hard-working woman named Delia Jones and her abusive, cheating husband Sykes. Delia and Sykes are drastically different characters. Delia is an honest, church going woman, who cleans white people 's laundry to make ends meet and Skyes is a low-down womanizer who uses his wife 's income to support not only himself but also Bertha the woman he is having an affair with. After years of putting up with her husband 's mistreatment, Delia finally holds her ground. She defends her job with a skillet.

For instance in “The Lottery” the scenes changed from quiet laughter, and children playing to everyone in the town stoning Mrs. Hutchinson. Which can be compared to the scene in “The Destructors” when Mr. Thomas retunes from his trip early, and the boys must make a quick decision to abandon the house or destroy it. The basic conflict of “The Lottery” and “The Destructors” can be viewed as individual vs. society. “The Lottery” expounds upon one person’s struggle against the mass population of this small town. All the events are considered normal

However, one thing is consistent through the paragraphs, and that is the collective agreement that something is amiss with this ritual. There is the opinion of the man, who organizes the ceremony, Mr. Summer’s own opinion, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villages about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by this black box” (p. 27 l. 1-3). Although he has an essential role in the lottery, Mr. Summers does not seem to appreciate the complete ritual, but for him some parts of it outweighs others, quite like the children’s eagerness to collect stones. The ritual appears hollow then, as if the boxes are interchangeable as long as the outcome remain the same.

The novel starts and finishes with the Gunslinger being exhausted, possibly leading to some of his pessimism and dizziness towards the task at hand. He initially follows the Man in Black’s burnt out fires and campsites, but ends up unsure of where he is going. Once he encounters with Jake, almost all sight of the Man in Black is gone. This is hardly off-putting, as he is no longer totally desperate to catch up to him. Roland is actually tired of chasing him, which is evident when he realizes, “…the two of them could cast the man in black aside like a cheap wind-up toy” (214).

Bill 's wife, Tessie, draws the black dot. She protests that the drawing wasn 't fair even as her neighbors begin stoning her to death (“The Lottery Summary” 1). In “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses various symbols, themes, and irony to develop the well-known short story. A symbol is a person, place, or thing that represents something beyond itself, most often something concrete or tangible that represents an abstract idea (“A Glossary Of…” 2). An instance of symbolism in “The Lottery” is the lottery itself.

Steinbeck comments on discrimination throughout the novella. Racial discrimination was directed towards crooks when he”ain’t wanted in the bunk hous” sexism was directed towards curleys Wife when George describes her as a bitch and hes “seen ‘em poison before, but never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her” ageism was directed to wards candy when hes “gonna get canned” when “he’s no good to himself” and Lennie was discriminated because of his disability when curley picks a fight with him He comments on humans constantly being stereotypical and discriminative and is trying to convey the idea that ‘we need to all be kinder’. He portrays the character of Curley as the antagonist of the novella who is cruel petulant and bullying. Both George and Lennie, as protagonists, express their distaste for this sort of

Staples is fearful because he is a black male in the late seventies and early eighties where people looked at them differently as if they were bad people, even though staples is as any other american working towards his dream. In the essay he says he’s fearful when he had written a story and was rushing to the office to show his editor and as he entered the building they had security chase after him, mistakenly thinking he was a burglar. He says, “ I had no way of proving who I was. I could only move briskly toward the company of

Black is culturally known as a dark and evil color, the choice of using black for the box is a perfect fit for the theme of the short story, foreshadowing the coming death of the citizen. No one in the village surely knows how the lottery started, but they kept on following through with it because it is what has always been done. Another representation of symbolism would be the stones that give an access to all the citizens in the village to throw stones at the selected winner of the lottery. As the narrator observes, "Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones." (Jackson 114) in which stoning is ancient and one that costs a great deal of punishment.

The village people were eager and ready to finish the lottery. “Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (Jackson, 396). The shocking lottery came to an end with the loss of a life. Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing in the short story “The Lottery,” by painting a beautiful picture of utopia, and building suspense and horror to keep the reader anxious to find out what is won in the lottery.

Old Man Warner expresses this desire for the lottery to not end when responding to the news of some villages stopping the lottery by saying, “ nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.” Mr.Warner is basically saying it would be uncivilized to discontinue the lottery. This passage also refers to the fact that the younger generation is having thoughts of wanting to stop this tradition. Furthermore, many of the characters express their uneasiness with change, as Mr.Warner says, “There has always been a lottery.” This indicates the importance of tradition to the villagers. The Lottery, demonstrates the complex feelings of a community engaging in a ritual event, in which they feel obligated to participate in.