The tradition of following particular notions and dogmas in our culture shape our role as individuals in society. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” we are introduced to the destructive influence that unchallenged or unquestioned dogma has on an entity's life and death in a community. In this paper I will engage in textual analysis with the purpose of demonstrating and comparing how Salman Rushdie’s outlooks of organized religion and its effect on society in his essay, “Imagine there’s No Heaven” compares to those implied in Jackson’s short story. “The Lottery,” conveys the argument of the endangerment in thoughtlessly following rituals in cultural society. In Rushdie’s essay he perceives these traditional followings of dogmatic …show more content…
Jackson uses a lot of irony throughout the story. The author begins the story explaining the villagers gathering in town for the lottery. The author misrepresents the actuality of this “lottery” to the reader. For instance she opens the story like this, “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 27th but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner (Jackson).” Before we are aware of the type of lottery that’s going to take place, the arrangements and villagers themselves seem innocent. When in fact every year, the village “lottery” is something violent that concludes in a hostile murder, an eccentric habitual tradition that proposes the hazards of rituals that are obeyed irrationally by a …show more content…
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.” Although falling apart and scarcely embodying a box anymore, the people appear to have boastfulness in the ceremonious lottery and have this forceful belief and certainty that the box’s necessity must not change. This forceful belief implies that the villagers fear change. They grasp securely to a fragment of the ritual that persist, horrified to modify even the most superficially irrelevant piece of it. Another example of where we are introduced to the damaging influence that unchallenged/unquestioned dogma has on an entity's life and death in a community is when half way through the story Jackson writes, “Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally.” This occurred right before the drawing of the names, where Mrs. Dunbar is asked if her son, Horace, will be participating for the family in the absence of Mr. Dunbar. The question was meaningless and had no purpose besides “tradition” but it is still asked although everyone knows Horace is still too young to participate. Although certain measures of the ritual have changed such as wooden chips are now slips of paper, the people in the village have no regularity in what rules they deem to follow and cherry-pick which ones to remove
To most people, traditions are very crucial and should be maintained all the time. However, in the short story, “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, it can be seen that even though traditions are important in many societies, not all traditions should be acceptable. The central idea of this short story is how mindlessly the townspeople are for accepting unreasonable actions as a part of a tradition. This can be seen through the use of symbolism. The black box used for the lottery symbolizes the tradition that the villagers have been following for a long time. According to the text, it states, “Mr.Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition was represented by the black box.”
Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery” satirically creates a society that puts the importance of tradition above even the life of the members of the community, as indicated by Old Man Warner’s response to Mr. Adams stating, “‘[O]ver in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.’ Old Man Warner snorted. ‘Pack of crazy fools … Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them … There’s always been a lottery,’ he added petulantly” (413). Here Old Man Warner defends the tradition of their society, though notably without justifying the tradition. Rather, he focuses on the people of other villages and the tradition as self-evident, both logical fallacies. The first argument he makes in favor of continuing to have a lottery is an ad
Shirley Jackson's, The Lottery, has raised questions in the back of every reader's mind towards the destructive yet blind rituals of mankind. A reflection of ourselves is what we see when looking through the pond of Jackson's mind. The Lottery clearly expressed Jackson's feelings concerning traditional rituals through her story, opened the eyes of its readers to properly classify and question some of today's traditions as cruel, and allowed room to foretell the outcome of these unusual traditions. Jackson's feelings towards the misuse of tradition as an excuse to cause harm have triggered her creativity for the creation of The Lottery. Jackson obviously saw examples of this misuse of tradition and ingeniously placed it into an exaggerated situation to let us see how barbaric our actions are. The townspeople, in the story, all come together for the annual lottery; however, in an interesting twist, those participating stone the winner to death. Everyone in the story seems horribly uncivilized yet they can easily be compared to today's society. Perhaps Jackson was suggesting the coldness and lack of compassion the human race can exhibit in situations regarding tradition and values. The People who were stoned to death represented values and good being as the townspeople, who represented society, cold-heartedly destroyed them ( Jackson 79 ). Immediately after reading The Lottery, one can compare the ritual, in the story, to some of today's barbaric traditions in a new point of v...
In conclusion, the use of symbolism, irony and setting in the Lottery is very evident, the author indirectly implicates the true darkness within the human heart. The Lottery remains relevant in society today because the overall vagueness of the city allows this story to be true to all people around the world. The short story shows us that humans are evil enough to follow traditions blindly, even if they cause pain and death in loved ones we know. Jackson also centers a lot of symbols and irony on religion and how they affect our culture and decisions. In this the reader can learn that sometimes it’s better for a person to follow his moral compass, and not just blindly follow his evil heart, and the evilness of others.
Jackson starts off the story by telling us, what a beautiful day it was she seems almost luring us and creating this false presentation. She uses irony rather flawlessly to create an element of surprise. “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o 'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. But in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o 'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.” (Jackson) As we begin to read further on, we start to see how impeccably she shows irony, they have the lottery done in time for them to
Jackson uses the lottery itself to function as an ironic symbol of tradition in the story. In today’s society, a lottery is an event that has positive connotations related to it. A lottery a game that is associated with fun, chance, fun, and expectation. Good things usually result from lotteries especially for those who win. Furthermore, those who don’t win have nothing to lose. Lotteries bring forth a feeling of great expectation of a wonderful outcome. Through out the story, the lottery is projected as a harmless and affable pastime, which is how it is used in today’s society; however, by the end of the story it ends with disaster.
Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery” in 1948, not long after the second World War. The horror of the Holocaust was still fresh in everyone’s mind’s. Jackson wrote this story to remind everyone that we are not so far from this world of sadistic human sacrifice. She created a town, very much like any American town, with the gathering of the towns people to celebrate some annual event. She wanted to shine a mirror on contemporary society, a reflection of humanity, or rather, inhumanity. One would think that she was protesting against the shallow hypocrites that rule the world.
Jackson shows how the weight of wrongness is so high that the villagers cannot help but display it with their expressions. The villagers “smiled” (L 28) at jokes instead of laughing and grinned “humorlessly and nervously” (L 164). Jackson has the villagers try so hard to hide their feelings because she feels that is how people behave when faced with unpleasant things, they try to ignore it and put on a façade instead. Jackson uses the actions of the villagers to show that they are not as at ease as they seem. The young “clung” (L 23-24) to their parents and the adults “stood away from the pile of stones” (L 26-27). Jackson uses these actions because they are “fear actions”- a person clings to someone when they are afraid and people avoid something when it brings them discomfort- and she does this to show that the lottery is something one should be afraid of. Jackson hints that the lottery is not as ordinary as it appears to be. One villager talked about how they were “giving [the lottery] up” (L 192-193) in the north village and the people “hoped that it was not Nancy” (L 298) who would get the bad paper. With a normal lottery, people would not want to give it up and they would want to be chosen so in writing this, Jackson wants the reader to consider that this lottery is abnormal, that it is something one would actually want to avoid instead of partake
“The Lottery” is about a barbaric ritual that takes place in a small town each year and requires all the villagers to draw sheets of paper to determine a winner. The winner of the Lottery must be stoned to death due to a misguided belief that this will help their crops grow even though most of the villagers don't remember that this is the reason they still perform the ritual. The message of the story is that people who do not question rituals they take part in, are going to face the consequences without understanding of what they are really doing. Shirley Jackson claims she wrote this story based off the villagers in North Bennington, where she and her kids lived, and how they treated her. Shirley Jackson’s biographer, Judy Oppenheimer, stated that Jackson and her children recall numerous accounts of receiving anti-semitic comments directed towards Stanley Edgar Hyman, Shirley Jackson’s husband. The story also relates to Jackson’s life and how she was treated unfairly, for example when Tessie Hutchinson was chosen to be stoned to death. For all of Jackson’s life she was treated unfairly just like Tessie Hutchinson and everyone who had to be stoned to death because of the tradition of the lottery. This relates to the period of time
In “The Lottery”, Jackson wrote about a special tradition of a small village. June 27th was warm and sunny, and it gave the impression like nothing could possibly go wrong. Everyone knows the lottery as an exciting thing, and everybody wants to win, but this lottery is unlike any other. This lottery was actually the tradition of stoning of an innocent villager; that year it was Tessie Hutchinson. Though the horrific ending was not expected, throughout the story Jackson gave subtle hints that this was not an average lottery. Jackson foreshadowed the death of Tessie Hutchinson with stones, the black box, and the three legged stool; she showed that unquestioning support of tradition can be fatal.
Traditions have excited in many cultures, and they have been in many generations. They make us who we are and where we come from. Our ancestors gave us traditional clothes to foods and even the religious beliefs. Only because we have traditions it will not mean we should follow every single one. We cannot follow bad traditions and justified them only because they were in our generations and even when there is a good one we do not follow them because they will not fit in the modern world.
First off, in order to understand the biblical allusions that are strongly expressed through Jackson’s literature within “The Lottery”, one must grasp that Jackson writes of the citizens within the town lacking unconditionally rich information that supports the reasoning behind the event of the lottery. Although most of the citizens within the town strongly believe that the lottery is just another assembly that they do every year, nowhere near close to the real answer, there were mixed thoughts as what the lottery was remembered for, all not fully capturing the plentiful meaning behind it. Some people remembered there had been a tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; while others believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was su...
In Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery,' irony is a major theme. This story is about a town full of elitist snobs that are stuck on their tradition of a lottery, even though it is a grim ritual and rather detrimental to the people in the town. The characters are honoring a tradition that is handed down to them from former generations. The reader is led through the outwardly normal and charming little village, and is taken on a ride of ironic horror as they slowly grasp the annual fate of one the village?s inhabitants. The title ?The Lottery? implies a contest with a winner of some kind, like a sweepstakes. When in reality the winner is actually the loser or person that will die by stoning. At the beginning of this story, the main character, Mrs. Hutchinson, is in favor of the lottery. The atmosphere of the town is casual yet anxious. Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late because she ?clean forgot? what day it is. This seems quite impossible to any reader that anyone would forget a day like lottery day. Her procrastination is reasonable but her excuse is lame. Mrs. Hutchinson complains that her husband, Bill, ?didn?t have enough time to choose.? And that the results of the drawing were not fair. In these statements, she is implying that the other villagers had more time to choose, and in fact given an advantage over the Hutchinson family. In reality, time had little to do with the drawing of the ?slips of paper.? As soon as they hold the second drawing, Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen. This is the climax of irony of this story. Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen for the lottery. She is shocked and astounded, having believed that she couldn?t possibly be chosen for the lottery. She begs or mercy, but the townspeople are strict with keeping to their traditions and her pleas of mercy fall on deaf ears and she is stoned to death.
The title of the story is “The Lottery” and the title is very ironic. When looking at the title readers may think there is a character who is about to become rich and have a better lifestyle. There is a lot more that is happening than what the title expects you to think. Another example of irony is the setting of the story. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. With such a beautiful and nice day going along with nice weather you would not think that death would end up occurring. At the end of the story when Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen for the lottery, it is ironic that it does not upset her that she was chosen. Tessie was really upset because of the way she is chosen she shows this by saying “It isn’t fair it isn’t right”. (5) Jackson use of irony gives the readers reason to think and expect the
The primary message that Jackson shows in “The Lottery” is that people can be involved with such a violent act and think nothing of it. In the story all the people are happy, “they stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.”(244) All the people in the town gather together without question to perform this horrible act of murder. All the people think nothing of this terrible act. Mr. Summers the man that runs the whole lottery says, “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work.”(245) This illustrates how they think of the lottery as an everyday occurrence. Old Man Warner says, “lottery in June, c...