The Lottery Shirley Jackson Analysis

The lottery happens once a year, and consist of everyone in the village. The archaic lottery had been around since the village was first establish. The villagers never knew a time when the lottery was not around. The kids were the first to show up “… Selecting the smoothest and roundest stones” (Jackson). They were accustomed to the routine they had been taught.

All of the foreshadowing represented in this short story expresses all that is wrong with the traditions of the lottery. Growing up generation after generation they do not know that the lottery is a bad choice. Taking Tessie for example, her only protests came after she was revealed to be the winner of the lottery. She did not want to die by the hands of friends and family, but in the instance, she was not picked she would not speak up. Testing the morality and ethics of the villagers’, the tradition has blinded them to the point they do not know it going against morals and

Summers declared the lottery open. There were lists to make up- of heads of families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in each family.” If there really is so much fussing to be done for the lottery to be declared open in the first place, a logical reason is that it is a tradition. To further the point, the text says, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box (p. 16, lines 74-77).” This goes back to the point that the town doesn’t want to upset the tradition because they don’t even want to get rid of the black box.

Many people would die to win the lottery; in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson you would do anything NOT to win this lottery. This annual lottery reveals the negative aspects of this town’s Tradition, Savagery, Barbarism, and cold-heartedness. In this paper I will show why this town blindly follows these customs, not because it’s a tradition but because of the accepting wickedness that can be shown. Why does the town follow this foolish tradition? Throughout “The Lottery” the narrator tells that the people do not remember how the lottery began, and that some of the older people believe the lottery has changed over the years, that now people just want to get it over with as fast as possible.

Is having a lottery to increase a farmer’s crop growth a fair idea? In the short story, The Lottery, readers find out that a small village host a lottery and the winner is stoned to death in order for the village to have a prosperous crop. Readers are left with a confused feeling due to people sacrificing another human to have a bountiful harvest. Readers can argue that the villagers should continue the drawing by blindly following the tradition to prosper. To begin with, the townspeople should discontinue the lottery.

The Lottery itself represents a primal example of loss of innocence; portrayed through the young boys who gather at the town square to collect rocks for the horrors soon to follow. An illustration of how traditions can lose their true meanings and come to represent violence and warfare. Furthermore, “The Lottery” also represents the decaying characteristics of traditions, as symbolized by the town’s black box, in this case where every year, someone’s name is drawn out of the black box and they are stoned to death, by other members who may or may not end up to be family. Nonetheless, it ends up to be the villagers who

The lottery tells us a story about a yearly tradition practiced by the villager of a small town and that their tradition is becoming pointless over time. The lottery is foreshadowing the violent conclusion in the story. The children would put stones in their pockets and make a piles of stones

Charmain Baker-Deer ENC1102 Mar 02, 2018 Essay draft 1 Topic: What is the theme of “The Lottery”? “The Lottery” is about small town, with a population of three hundred people. Everyone from the village is subjected to participates in an annual ritual, where members are required to pick from a black box to determine their destiny. In “The Lottery,” Jackson highlights human kind capacity of victimizing violence and tradition to control the masses.

The Lottery Template Topic Sentence: One can see by examining the symbolism of the worn out black box, and the foreshadowing of the children putting rocks in their pockets in the The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, that this story is a classic archetypal horror story. Argument: Firstly, one can see that when Mr. Summers arrived at the square carrying a black wooden box, he asked the villagers if anyone would give him a hand with putting the box on the three- legged stool, however, many hesitated to come near the black box, a symbolic twist that foreshadows the imminent ending. The black box has been used for generations, even before the oldest villager. It has been said that the current box was made from the pieces of the

The tradition of the lottery has been carried out for so long in this village that nobody even knows the reason for its occurring in the first place and nobody questions it. When Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village, is told about other villages giving up the tradition of the lottery, he says that they are, “[A] pack of crazy fools [...]. There [has] always been a lottery [...]” (Jackson, 4). There is no reason why there has always been a lottery except that every year on June 27th, they held the lottery.

This was the first reason that I thought about when I looked into why they did this. It was that to control the population they killed people off every year though the lottery. The main reason that I thought this was because Old Man Warner says “ lottery in June, crops be heavy soon”. Almost as if he is saying that there will be more food for everybody after the lottery.

The characters’ behaviors don’t exactly scream “I love the lottery!” The most logical reason for doing something that makes them unhappy is they are doing it as a tradition. But why not break the tradition? After digging a little deeper, it is easy to see that the lottery has been going on for a long time: “There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here (p. 16, lines 78-82).” Since the original black box was made when the village first settled, the lottery is an ancient tradition that is generations old.

The purpose of the lottery is to continue the old tradition of sacrificing a scapegoat in order for a harvest. The scapegoat is chosen at random and then stoned to death by his/her companions. Although “The Lottery” reflects an event from the past, Jackson shows that many of the actions of the town resemble the tribulations that ensue in today’s society. To begin with, like the villagers in the story, our society also partakes in valuing tradition.

They do not want to follow the other towns that had given up the lottery. The townspeople are apprehensive of transition because of the unknown factors. One of the examples in the story that shows their lack of willingness to change their customs is the battered black box they use for the lottery. It has been stained and the original color of the wood is shown on the side. Every year, Mr. Summers, who manages the lottery suggests to the villagers to get a new box.

“Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and the roundest stones”(304).The ritual and traditions of the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s story seem to be just as old as the town itself, especially since most of the residents do not recall any of the old rituals, even the Old Man Warner, who is “celebrating" his 77th lottery. This helps illustrate how the people of the village just went on with the lottery without even questioning it. Like during the shock testing in Lessing experiments. The subjects blindly followed orders to obtain information even if it meant killing the person. Even in today’s society we are in social groups that define who we are and we do whatever we can to conform to