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Importance of Setting in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
The setting in the beginning of The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, creates a mood of peacefulness and tranquillity. The image portrayed by the author is that of a typical town on a normal summer day. Shirley Jackson uses this setting to foreshadow an ironic ending.
First, Jackson begins by establishing the setting. She tells the reader what time of day and what time of year the story takes place. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a typical day it is in this small town. The time of day is set in the morning and the time of year is early summer. She also describes that school has just recently let out for summer break, letting the reader infer that the time of year is early summer. The setting of the town is described by the author as that of any normal rural community. Furthermore, she describes the grass as "richly green" and that "the flowers were blooming profusely" (196). These descriptions of the surroundings give the reader a serene felling about the town. Also, these descriptions make the reader feel comfortable about the surroundings as if there was nothing wrong in this quaint town.
Upon reading the first paragraph, Shirley Jackson describes the town in general. The town is first mentioned in the opening paragraph where she sets the location in the town square. She puts in perspective the location of the square "between the post office and the bank" (196). This visualizes for the reader what a small town this is, since everything seems to be centralized at or near the town square. This is also key in that the town square is the location for the remaining part of the story. The town square is an important location for the setting since the ending of the story will be set in this location. Also, Shirley Jackson creates a comfortable atmosphere while describing the residents of the town. First, she describes the children gathering together and breaking into "boisterous play"(196). Also, the children are described as gathering rocks, which is an action of many normal children. She described the men as gathering together and talking about "planting and rain, tractors and taxes"(196). Finally, she describes the women of this community as "exchanging bits of gossip"(196) which is a common stereotype of women. She creates a mood for the reader of the town and residents of this town on a normal summer morning.
Capote begins the novel with a complete description of not only the town as a whole, but also the people and landmark buildings, which allows Capote to characterize the town completely. In the first line of the passage Capote uses the rhetoric of diction and imagery, to not only expose the surroundings to the audiences, but also to begin the higher and implicit meanings of his words. “Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area”, this quote from the passage provides the implicit understanding that the land surrounding this town is unkempt, and lacks human interference. The “high wheat plains” act as a barrier to the outside world that those who live in the village, want to stay isolated from. The ending of the same line uses diction to explicitly show that this one little area is divorced from other communities. “Area that other Kansans call “out there””, shows that even to people who live in Kansas, which Americans consider “out there” can call this town “out there” providing exemplary evidence to Capote’s purpose of proving the seclusion of the village. “The countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert- clear air”, shows the use of diction and implicit meaning. ...
Jackson’s keen use of foreshadowing, irony, and symbolism creates a story that is able to stir debates and force readers to think for themselves. The story’s idyllic summer setting creates a carefree atmosphere full of life, providing the reader with a false sense of happiness and security while also serving as a foil to the dark clues sprinkled throughout the rest of the story. By having the boys create “a great pile of stones in one corner of the Square” prior to the drawing, and having the adults appear subdue and apprehensive while standing “away from the pile of
The Opium Wars were a series of three wars between the Chinese and the British; primarily fought in regard to the illegal trade of opium in China during the 19th century. They manifested the conflicting natures of both nations and demonstrated China’s misconceptions of its own superiority. The Opium Wars resulted in the humiliating defeat of the Chinese to a country they considered to be “barbarians”.
Faulkner uses the view point of an unnamed town member while he uses a third person perspective to show the general corrosion of the southern town’s people.
...this situation to be a truth in any city in the world. So in this Jackson shows how setting is used to magnify the darkness in all of human hearts.
The story is taking place in a prairie. The first line of pg. 47 declares that. The same page is talking about a storm might be coming. I guess, there is a ocean near the prairie. On pg. 48, I found that the prairie landscape is discomforting due to the fact that it seems alive. It also talks about the farmsteads are there to intensify the situation. That same page talking about putting fire. It is taking place during winter, and may be somewhere during December. I think, the time is during the Great Depression of 1930's. In pg. 51 we found that John's farm is under mortgage. The same page tells, He works hard too much to earn some dollars. From pg. 52, I also found, he does not appoint any helper. In pg. 52, Ann remembers about their good time as well. Now, they are not having that of a easy life. They are tired by the labour. These all quotations proves that, the setting of the story is in a hill during the great depression of 1930's.
The element of setting is used to create a definite atmosphere, and therefore, helping to create a desired mood .In Kate’s childhood, she and Matt visited the ponds regularly. They used to go “through the woods with their luxuriant growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty boxcars lines up receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves” (Lawson 4). Lawson has used powerful imagery to further describe the ponds. The settings of the ponds are a central part of the story. The ponds are a symbol of the tight relationship between Matt and Kate. They had spent “hundreds of hours there” (Lawson 15). Ponds were like a home to her. In the prologue, Kate stated that “there is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than that” (Lawson 4). The ponds also symbolizes Kate’s childhood. Matt and Kate were able to overcome the tragedy of their parent’s death by visiting the ponds, but however, they did not survive Matt’s “disloyalty”. The ponds later developed into the scene of the crime. Kate mentions in the book “By the following September the ponds themselves would have been desecrated twice over, as far as I was concerned, and for some years after that I did not visit them at all” (Lawson 218). Therefore, the ponds are of great significance in Crow Lake. The setting has developed from a warm, sweet, memorable place to a scene of crime in crow Lake.
The setting is nearly a character. Lonely, a bit disgusting, not wholesome, but with a semi-authentic dreaminess. Towns are made of people and towns are full of people, this town is no different. The characters could’ve told the story without the ranch girl. We could have read about Carla, or Andy, or Haskell, Suzy or even Lacey or any others, and been left with much the same story. They all live without growing, little things change but their lives stagnate. They don’t grow into greater things than themselves. Their victories are bitter because they are meaningless. Their failures, crippling. Lacey won’t get Andy either. The ranch girl’s father, can’t quit his job. For all his swagger, Andy is dead. Carla’s marriage doesn’t work out. These pieces of quilt, that make this story, may not directly be the setting, but without them the story has no setting. This town is a dead end. It swallows everyone mentioned in the story in one way or another, or rather they all allow themselves to be
In the readings we read they all touched on what sports reveal about American Culture. In the reading “Athlete of the Century: Babe Didrikson” by Andrew Postman, Women’s Sports and Fitness, it was a little biography about Babe Didrikson and how she became such an amazing athlete. She became notice during a time where woman were really not allowed to be their self or
Shirley Jackson?s insights and observations about society are reflected in her shocking and disturbing short story The Lottery. Jackson reveals two general attitudes in this story: first is the shocking tendency for societies to select a scapegoat and second is the idea that communities are victims of social tradition and rituals.
(Jackson, 1). Jackson wants the readers to believe that the town was ordinary and innocent, but ends with a shocking ending of a terrible stoning.
One of the main symbols of the story is the setting. It takes place in a normal small town on a nice summer day. "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green." (Jackson 347).This tricks the reader into a disturbingly unaware state,
A story will become unreliable and lose the reader’s interest unless its author knows how to draw an exquisite circumstance and arrange the information. The story has demonstrated the descriptive scenes, even it’s a small detail. The powerful descriptive information and the symbols in the story helped to make the success of the story. That process is called setting which is the idea of the broad, form picture of the story. In the beginning of the story, we can see the house where the narrator and her husband rent for their summer vacation. It is the main and only place that story takes place. It was a colonial mansion and it was filled up with romantic love and happiness. By taking a first a look at its beautiful outside form and appearance but then the narrator described, “It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for ther...
The characters in a short story are vital to understanding everything that the author has put into her work. Most of Shirley Jackson’s characters in “The Lottery” adapt as the story goes on, revealing their true opinions and behaviors. Her characters are also true to life, which establishes realism in her stories. Tess, Old Man Warner, and the women of this story all provide outlooks and opinions that shape “The Lottery” into the constructive story it is.
The houses are all lined in formation, with similar colors and structure. Even the colors and decorations in the houses are all pretty much the same, pinkish red and yellow, that makes everything feminine and monotonous, perhaps even boring, just like the houses on the outside. The people of the town are all different, but are all narrow-minded in the same way, which is shown when they gather and gossip about Edward (Burton, 1990). These are all examples of how there is not much difference from one another in a way that they are all controlled by the same, concrete social group. What the beginning of the film brings us is a type of realism where people live in the excessive stereotype of suburban America.