Brief Summary Of The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Would you ever live in a place where a randomly selected person gets stoned each year? Knowing that it could be your family, friends, or even yourself? In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, it tells a story about a village where people have a tradition of the lottery once a year, whoever wins the lottery will be stoned to death. Tessie Hutchinson is a woman who forgets and arrives late at the lottery. Her husband, Bill Hutchinson draws the lottery for his family, he gets the paper with a black dot, which means one of his family member will be thrown at with stones. Bill’s family draws among themselves again, this time Tessie gets the paper with the black dot and the villagers stones her to death. The purpose of the lottery was to have good harvest, but now the

Shirley Jackson takes great care in creating a setting for the story, The Lottery. She gives the reader a sense of comfort and stability from the very beginning. It begins, "clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." The setting throughout The Lottery creates a sense of peacefulness and tranquility, while portraying a typical town on a normal summer day.

Nebeker, Helen E. “The Lottery’: Symbolic Touch De Force” Short Story Criticism, edited by Jenny Cromie, vol. 39, Gale Group, 2000, 75 vols, pp. 187-90. Originally published in American Literature, vol. 46, no. 1, March, 1974, pp. 100-07.

How can the villagers kill a person they know for a long time every single year just because of a silly tradition that has been alive for generations? It is pretty bizarre how the villagers still cope with traditions that can kill themselves any year. Almost everyone who participated in this lottery was extremely nervous showing their fear of death. A tall boy in this crowd drew for his mother and him, he risked his life with a higher chance of getting killed. This shows the love he has for his mother. Mr. Summer said “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it”, foreshadowing the death of the tall boy’s father. The tall boy might have thrown pebbles on his father, leading to his demise and a tough future for

Shirley Jackson is to be considered one of the best authors of the 1900’s. Her style of writing reeled in readers from all different ages. She can be creepy, hilarious, and inspiring to the eyes that see her words. In Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, she keeps the reader on the edge of their seat wanting to continue reading beyond the final word. She uses literary devices to shape her story to grab her readers attention all throughout the story. By using these literary devices, Shirley Jackson shows off her dark and twisted side as well as her fantastic writing style to emphasize why she is one of the writers of her generation.

In both stories, the innocent characters were fighting death at the hands of someone who found the idea of killing another human being to be a game. In “The Lottery” the game of death consumed an innocent life solely because a few individuals founded a tradition; and in “The Most Dangerous Game” the game of death consumed an innocent life solely because one person thought it was merely entertaining. Both authors portrayed the antagonist as friendly, warm and welcoming. In the Lottery, the antagonists were the families whom participated in the drawing of a name that lead to the stoning of another family member (which may or may not be their own family member). In “The Most Dangerous Game” the antagonist was a well-off general who opened his luxurious home to guests who have gone astray from their original destination. Death is the main theme of both short stories and both authors portrayed this dark and dreary idea as a game the characters are playing.

In today’s society we perceive the lottery as being a great fortune brought down upon you by Lady Luck. It is a serendipitous event, even if the person has done nothing to earn it. One would never see the lottery as an unfortunate occasion that occurred in your life because it is supposed to bring prosperity into your life. Also, one would not dare to think that winning the lottery would bring such repercussions as injury or death. In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the author could have used Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson as the town’s scapegoat due to their reluctance to change traditions, her horrible work ethic, and minority status as a woman.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.

The setting of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is in a small town with a population of approximately three hundred people. Some of the key themes in “The Lottery,” are a woman by the name of Shirley Jackson represents a nation of scapegoats, as someone who is blamed for the bad of society and banished to expel sin and allow for renewal. Mob psychology governs the people of the town, and they abandon their reasoning, to act, to a large extent, with cruelty. The story “The Lottery” describes a small fictional town which observes—as many other communities, both large in size and small, throughout contemporary America—an annual tradition.

It is safe to say to say that one person does not deserve harm for the betterment of a society or a community. In the short-stories, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, each display similarities when it comes to sacrifice for better. Although each society believes in the practice, in the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” the citizens believes the practice of locking a little boy away in a closest will benefit them to live happily and prosper. In “The Lottery” a town of people hold a yearly assembly where a person of the community is randomly chosen to be stoned for the hope of more crops in the fall. Each of the stories display sacrifice in their theme, as well as people in the community who believe that the practice of sacrifice is wrong, and the belief that the benefits for all come from pain and suffering of one single individual.

In the short story, The Lottery, written by Shirley Jackson, is about a small village or some type of society with a yearly tradition called, the lottery. From what the reader may read online, they may find out that during the time period Jackson wrote this, she was interested in magic and witchcraft. Not only that she was also rumored to have gotten rocks thrown at her by children who believed she was a witch. One may also say, that the story was absolutely unique and the ending completely shocking. Especially, with how it begins.

The story started when people are gathered every end of June for the annual lottery ritual in a small village. All the head of each family are required to grab a slip a slip of paper in the box that is placed in the middle of the village. The in charge of the lottery was Mr. Summer. The conflict occurs when Tessie found out that her husband Bill was the center of the Villager’s attention. There is something on the paper that he picked. Because of that Tessie can’t even accept it and she keep on yelling that it is not fair. She believed that the time given to Bill was not enough to pick the paper that he wanted from Mr. Summer. The entire Hutchinson family, are

“Every group feels strong, once it has found a scapegoat” (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913). A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for all the faults and corruptions that others have committed. In history, there are lots of scapegoat examples, the most popular being; Jesus Christ and the Jews in the Second World War. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson used persecution and tradition to demonstrate how scapegoating justified unfair killing. Both of these aspects relate to the World War that preceded only a couple years before the story was written. The persecution was blind and done once a year as a tradition that everyone expected to happen.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the small village, at first, seems to be lovely, full of tradition, with the townspeople fulfilling their civic duties, but instead this story is bursting with contrast. The expectations that the reader has are increasingly altered. The title of this short story raises hope, for in our society the term “lottery” typically is associated with winning money or other perceived “good” things. Most people associate winning a lottery with luck, yet Jackson twists this notion around and the luck in this village is with each of the losers.

Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916, in San Francisco. She spent her childhood in nearby Burlingame where she began writing poetry and short stories as a teenager. Shirley is known as one of the most impressive and persuasive authors of the twentieth century. Her best piece of work is the short story “The Lottery” published on the June 26, 1948, revealed a frightening underside of a rural American village. In ‘the lottery’ a human being stoned to death and her fate is decided by the black box that contained the paper with the black spot. That innocent person becomes the victim of violence and cruelty by the community. However, the community still believed that what they are doing will somehow benefit them in the form of good crop.