Kenley Duke D.E. English Professor Walker October 9th 2012 Analyzing Literature: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson Tradition, defined my Webster’s Dictionary, is an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior. Not once does it say that tradition is meant to have good intentions. Such is the case in the “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The villagers in this town gather annually to conduct what they refer to as “the lottery.” This gruesome event selects one of the town members to meet their untimely death by the mid-evil process of stoning.
Shirley Jackson was the author of “The Lottery” and she showed death by community. Once a year the townspeople gathered together and took a piece of paper from a black box. The first round of the drawing is just for the head of the family. Whichever man has the dotted paper then it is on to everyone in that family taking a draw. Now whoever has drew the paper with the dot on it is the one who gets stoned to death by the townspeople.
Where he stood a little apart from his family. Not looking down at his hand. The color black can represent sadness, mourning, and fear. Every time the box is mentioned before they find out which family has to choose a slip of paper, the box is always preceded with the word black, showing the readers that this box isn’t taken lightly by the villagers, and is a symbol of the death that could so easily be theirs. Word choice [Mr. Summers and Mr. Adams] grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously.
When the villagers gather in the morning, she wants the readers to realize the villagers get nervous and quiet when traditional objects are pulled out to begin the lottery. These objects, such as the “black box” (18) and the “three-legged stool” (18), are connected symbols to their ritual. The color black, which symbolizes “complete death” (black) and “mourning” (black), is used frequently giving the image of darkness in the story. A box symbolizes that it “holds a secret” (box) indicating the power that it contains. The “three-legged stool” (18) is considered to support the citizen’s fate and how the people support this ritual.
Tradition can be lead to great Christmas parties, if followed blindly, is the theme of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. In “The Lottery” the reader is exposed to a state that has a lottery every April 1. At this lottery, the town draws a name to see who it will sacrifice. . As one of the characters, Grandma Bess is being stoned to death by her family members, friends, children, elected leaders, and church members stone to
Citera Propst Jon-Paul Wimer Introduction to Fiction November 2, 2011 The Lottery The Lottery, written in 1948 by Shirley Jackson, is a short story about a small village that holds an annual drawing of the lottery. To most the lottery is perceived as positive if won. In Jackson’s story the winner of the lottery is stoned to death as a sacrifice a good season of crops. The winner of the lottery is more than likely the rest of the village, and the loser being the one who was sacrificed. The Lottery can have multiple themes, but an interesting theme to focus and analyze would be tradition.
3 March 2015 Evil Disguised as Tradition “The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that tells the story of a town and its tradition of a yearly lottery. In this story, the townspeople come together once a year to pull slips from a box to see who will be stoned to death. The lottery is the main subject of this story and the rules of the lottery are simple. One person from every household (usually the man of the house) pulls a ticket from the traditional black box of slips. Whoever pulls the slip with a black dot, must draw again, only this time the only people that will draw from the black box with be the members of the household that pulled the slip with the black dot first.
Jake gylinhall Assignment #2 Wednesday Class The Lottery builds itself around suspense of an old tradition of stoning one person within the village every year. This story is more importantly about the importance and strength that tradition can have on many groups of people, and even a large town. Tradition involves handing down beliefs, practice, or ritual from generation to generation. However, there is an obvious problem with tradition, if we weren’t present at the time the tradition was made, who was to judge if this tradition, in its beliefs and practice, were ethical or just? The power that helps overcome this problem is by argumentum ad Populum.
“The Lottery” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” portrays a small town in which the citizens gather for a yearly lottery. Unlike a typical lottery, this is one you would not want to win. The lottery in this story is used for public stoning contrary to the first thing that comes to the readers mind when they think of winning the lottery; a big sum of money. This work of fiction demonstrates conformity and rebellion, while suggesting that the lottery is a ritualistic ceremony. “The Lottery” focuses around a village on their annual lottery.
The way that the story ended suggested that the first citizens of this town were superstitious and that possibly someone was killed in the month of June, and they had a good crop harvest. The people in the past equated that with the death, so they started this ritual to insure the success of future crops and continued it into modern times. The people of that town had been experiencing this lottery all their lives and didn’t know any different, or that they were doing something