The Lottery Essays

Shirley Jackson created a short story by the name of “The Lottery”, which was published by The New Yorker in 1948. “The Lottery” talks about a community in which the villagers gather once a year on June 27th to have a village wide lottery. The head of households are called by surname and pick a slip of paper from a black box that has been used for generations as per tradition. When a family has been chosen by the lottery, each member participates in a family lottery. Once a family member is chosen by a black dot on their paper slip, the family, excluding the chosen family member, joins the community once again, and the community comes together to stone to death the “winner”.

Reaction to The Lottery Is tradition a blindly way of passing down beliefs, rituals, activities through generations and keeping them alive in human societies? Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14 1916 - August 8 1965) was an American writer whose work has received increased attention from literary critics. Jackson is best known for the short story;’’The lottery’’ that describes a small town which observes an annual ritual-a lottery. Every year this old tradition culminates with a violent murder of an innocent villager.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, published in 1842, entails of a short story with an unpredictable twist and erratic ending, as the reader undergoes an epiphany- realizing this type of lottery is not one wants to win. On June 27th, at 10 O’clock AM, an annual lottery takes place. Each town’s member has their name called and must choose a slip of paper from a black box. The individual who picks the paper with the black dot must then have their family draw again and the individual who obtains the black dot “wins”. Each member in the town turns their back on one of their very own, as the winner becomes stoned.

The Lottery Shirley Jackson was a short story writer and novelist; however, she was also a loner and an introvert. Shirley was born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, CA. Jackson and her family moved East when she was 17, were she attended Rochester University. After doing a year, she dropped out of school, stayed at home for a year and began practicing on her writing. Jackson entered Syracuse University in 1937, where she met her future husband.

“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay"(Jiddu Krishnamurti).The lottery is a story about horror and what can happen about having tradition for too long. What I think Shirley Jackson wants us to learn about this story is to not have a tradition for so long, be smart about my choices and not to do things that I know that are not good. Shirley Jackson wrote poetry and kept journals throughout her life. “Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1919.

Shirley Jackson is known as one of the most brilliant and talented authors of the twentieth century. One of her most popular short stories is "The Lottery". " The Lottery" was published in the New York Yorker on June 28, 1948. This short story received a popular amount of attention from the readers.

The short story, “The Lottery” was written and published in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War. During World War II, there was a system set up called the draft in which the government chooses groups of young men to fight at random. This was very scary and chosen at random for the young men. The draft, in a few ways, refers a lot to “The Lottery” and Shirley Jackson was surely influenced by the recent war in the making of this short story. It is a totally random and scary for the individuals called in both instances.

Everyday use is a short story by Alice Walker published in her 1973 collection in Love and Trouble. This story revolves around the relationship between a mother and her daughters. The story concerns a young woman who has visited her mother in the village after a very long time. She thinks herself very educated and smart and attempts unsuccessfully to get the quilt which her mother had promised to gift to her younger daughter on her wedding. Another story, The Lottery is one of the most famous American short story written by Shirley Jackson.

Zachary Sampson Honors English Period 2a October 4, 2016 A Comparative Analysis of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Interlopers” by Saki     Have you ever read a story and felt as if the tension and anxiety inside a story as if it were real? In both “The Interlopers” by Saki and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson the authors use several literary elements to create suspense and tension. Both of these authors use pacing, foreshadowing, and character interactions to similarly create suspense within both stories.

The Lottery In the short story,” The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson the characters have different views on” the lottery.” In the short story Mrs. Hutchinson does not agree or like the thought of the lottery. She does not like it because she thinks it is stupid and she thinks it is unfair. Also you can tell she thinks it is unfair because she yells it out to everyone in the crowd.

In the short story, “The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, Edgar Award Winner for best short story, the plot mainly surrounds tradition. The small village in the story is preparing for their annual “lottery”. The author uses dialogue to convey the fact that this lottery has been a tradition in their village for many years. The reader soon realizes the dark turn on this lottery. The “winner” suffers the fate of being brutally stoned to death by the rest of the villagers.

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” contains several powerful messages. First, Mrs. Hutchinson’s selfeshness is exposed through her actions. “‘There’s Don and Eva,’ Mrs Hutchenson yelled. ‘Make them take thier chance!’” Mrs. Hutchinson was willing to sacrafice her own family to make her chances of survival greater.

Jackson in her story “The Lottery” takes readers on an obscure emotional journey. In her story she implies that it can be dangerous to blindly follow tradition. In a small seemingly peace filled village a lottery is taking place. Everyone is participating Mr. Summers, the event organizer arrives carry the black box which hold all of the lots. One father, Mr. Hutchinson, takes his turn and draws the loosing lot.

In the short story "The Lottery" The style is described in the first sentence, "The morning of June 27th was clear and sonny, with the fresh warmth of a full day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green", and that kind of style is distinctive style. In this story there is a lot of verbal irony, also know as sarcasm. The sarcasm usually comes from Mrs. Summers because that’s how she gets her point a cross, but not in a bad way. The tone in the story I would say would be very consistent when I comes to the attitudes.

The climax of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is when Tessie reveals the paper with the black dot. With the reveal of the black dot, the villagers begin to surround Tessie and start to stone her to death. The stoning of Tessie Hutchinson reveals that the lottery is a tradition filled with horror and death. Even though many of the villagers voice their opinion against the lottery, they still participate in the activity. Once the tradition of the lottery is finished, all the villagers go back to their normal life and pretend that nothing happened.

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the author comments on the faults of tradition in modern society. She asserts that certain traditions, even though they are obsolete and no longer serve any purpose, have become so widely accepted that people fail to see the problems in them. This commentary is expressed through the opinions of Old Man Warner, who, when a conversation concerning other villages that have eradicated the lottery arises, says, “Pack of crazy fools... nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore...

The Lottery is a short, fictional story written in 1948 by Shirley Jackson. It was published in a magazine called The New Yorker. It takes place in a small village, on June 27th. The children had just got out of school and were piling up rocks and stones. Throughout the middle of the story, the heads of households draw their slips of paper, open them, and the Hutchinson’s redraw to see who has to face the inevitable.

When a person experiences a one thing enough time, eventually, they will become desensitize to it. People can become used to inhumane things such as death and murder if it is entrenched sufficiently into their lives. For instance, in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the tradition of a community brutally murders a member of their town due to an insensible tradition, when the victims challenge the morality of the ritual, the community shows no remorse including her victim husband, dehumanizing the

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about villagers gathering on a warm day in late June. They gather to participate in a lottery ran by Mr. Summers. All the children arrive first and begin collecting stones. Mr. Summers calls each man forward to a black wooden box where each one selects a slip of paper.

Shirley Jackson's, “The Lottery,” portrays the tradition of a small town in which a member of the community must get sacrificed in order to allow for a good agricultural season. The ways in which they do so is a fair lottery where citizens draw and see if they are the “chosen one” which they end up stoning to death. All citizens must partake in the lottery, including children and the elderly. Through Jackson’s development of the story, the people seem to be in a state of excitement and thrill when being part of the lottery. The citizens are constantly gossiping, laughing, and kids playing, waiting to see who is next to be stoned.