The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" portrays a small town in which the citizens gather for a yearly lottery. Unlike the "typical" lottery, this is not one you would want to win. Throughout "The Lottery," Jackson focuses on families from the village in order to demonstrate the role of separation of genders. Gender is defined as the sexual identity of a person, especially in relation to society or culture. Gender divisions exist within the community in "The Lottery" and issues of gender help to explain the characters action and thoughts.

During the lottery, everyone is equal and the society is genderless. Although the men draw as the head of the household, the women partake in the final rounds and the stoning of the victim. This is evident when "Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands"(200). This shows that even though women did not normally participate in town events, the lottery was an exception to the rule. Young girls were also equal to young boys during this event. Both the girls and the boys stoned the victim along with the rest of the community, regardless of gender. This suggests that the lottery serves as a great equalizer abolishing all forms of separation of gender.

Despite this equality during the lottery, gender does drive this story. Division of labor is evidence that a separation of gender exists. Due to the fact that Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves are men in the village, they are given the opportunity to administer the lotter. By having this chance, they gain the ability to prove to the people in the community that men are the holders of the highest positions. In his making of the list, Mr. Summers imposes his power upon the community, by determining who will draw from the box first.

Gender plays a role in the purpose of the lottery. The lottery is set up to show women that by producing more children, they will lessen their chances of being chosen. This is due to the fact that in larger families, the chance of one person being chosen is reduced significantly with each additional member of teh family. The opposite is true for small families. Because women are the producers of children, they are the main target of the lottery. They are encouraged to produce more children, thereby taking upon even more responsibilities as a housewife.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
492 Words | 1 Pages
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.
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Allegories In The Lottery
812 Words | 2 Pages
“The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson in 1948, is a provoking piece of literature about a town that continues a tradition of stoning, despite not know why the ritual started in the first place. As Jackson sets the scene, the villagers seem ordinary; but seeing that winning the lottery is fatal, the villagers are then viewed as murders by the reader. Disagreeing with the results of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson is exposed to an external conflict between herself and the town. Annually on June 27th, the villagers gather to participate in the lottery. Every head of household, archetypally male, draws for the fate of their family, but Tessie protests as she receives her prize of a stoning after winning the lottery. Jackson uses different symbols – symbolic characters, symbolic acts, and allegories – to develop a central theme: the
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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
764 Words | 2 Pages
Can one individual change a large group of people? Can the effort of one person be enough to break up a faulty tradition practicing by a society? In most cases the answer would be ‘yes’ and in some ‘no’. Many individuals try and succeed but many fail just like the main character Tessie Hutchinson in Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”. When someone hears the word “lottery”, he or she may think that someone will be rewarded with prize. But “The Lottery” By Shirley Jackson is different than what one thinks. In the story, a lottery is going to be conducted not like Mega Million or Powerball one play here. In the story, the person who wins the lottery is stoned to death instead of being rewarded with the prize. Tessie Hutchinson, the major character in the story, is wife of Mr. Bill Hutchinson and also a mother of three siblings and a married daughter. Jackson presents Mrs. Hutchinson as a strong rebellious character. Mrs. Hutchinson plays two different roles in this story. She is excitedly participating in the lottery ceremony at the beginning but her character shifts when her husband picks the winning lottery of death for their family. Mrs. Hutchinson is presented as a blind follower of old tradition, a strong rebellious character and a selfish and careless person in the society.
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Violence In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
525 Words | 2 Pages
The Lottery had an unforgettable turn of events to how it leads up to it’s tragic ending. It’s often put to thought why did, this town follows the traditional acts of violence. Fritz Oehlschlaeger informs how this society’s conflicts is between male authority and female resistance. For example. Mr. Summers and his wife represent the male’s superior and female submission in the community. Mr. Summers was given his head position by not having any children the people feel sympathy.But, however his wife “was a scold” (pg.256). Demonstrating that a woman is described a “scold” rather the male is treated with special rights. Jackson also strongly connects on how Tessie can relate to Anne Hutchinson and Hester Prynne (Scarlet Letter ). How each woman's situation ,they are marked as women trying to show their beliefs in a strong male control territory and they are trying to be contained. The Lottery was a male dominated system, and was reinforced to control the women . Girls would stay aside awhile, the
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The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
370 Words | 1 Pages
"The Lottery" is a short story that shows just how disturbing the human mind can be at times. As the story proceeds it builds the reader up till the end where what you thought was going to happen did not turn out that way. But is that not how our lives are portrayed? Do we not build ourselves up to society believing what they say and do until the matter is put into our hands? Mrs. Hutchinson was a follower of society just like we are. Everyday was the same routine and every year she played the lottery just like all of the other town people. But this year would be a very different year for Mrs. Hutchinson because her chance at the lottery was about to happen. Now as a reader in this day, we would think of the lottery to be a great prize to receive but not during the days of these town people.
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Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
906 Words | 2 Pages
The theme in “The Lottery” is violence and cruelty. Violence and cruelty is a major theme because there is a lot of violence and cruelty in the world. The Lottery has been read as addressing such issues as the public's fascination with salacious and scandalizing journalism, McCarthyism, and the complicity of the general public in the victimization of minority groups, epitomized by the Holocaust of World War II. The Holocaust was very cruel and violent cause other people didn’t like certain people so they just kill them and their children and still now we have violence and cruelty with wars and people that hate each other.
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Sentencing Women In The Lottery Essay
616 Words | 2 Pages
What do people think when they hear the word, “lottery?” Do you think about money, power, sacrifice? For most people its winning a lot of money or a lot of power, but for people in the early 1900’s it was far different. In the story the “Lottery”, a lottery was a ceremony where they picked a person to be sacrificed. The men were usually the ones who picked because the women were not treated equally. Women couldn’t pick for their families during the lottery, they were talked down to by men and not allowed to speak their minds, and they were pitied and made to feel less dominant than the males.
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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
1316 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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The Influence of Characters in Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery"
678 Words | 2 Pages
Immediately, the women of “The Lottery” seem to be a friendly group who stick by one another’s sides. However, as the plot uncovers, the reader discovers that each woman would easily choose tradition over friendship. The traits of the women include endorsement of the “dominant culture” (Hattenhauer, 45), value of tradition, and belief in fairness. As the lottery transpires, the women advise Tess to “be a good sport” (Jackson, 140) because they all “took the same chance” (Jackson, 140). This simple encounter provides evidence that the women of “The Lottery” would undoubtedly lose a friendship to preserve the morals of tradition. When Tess finally reveals the paper with the mark on it, Mr. Summers is quick to begin the final step in the Lottery. The women oblige, and are even quicker to grab a stone from the children’s pile. One woman even orders another to “hurry up” (Jackson, 141) before picking up a “stone so large” (Jackson, 141) it required the use of both hands. “The Lottery” ends with the town’s people stoning Tess to death. Among the killers are the women that Tess once called friends.
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The Horror of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
1176 Words | 3 Pages
Winning vast amounts of money can make anyone slaphappy, but unfortunately this type of wager won’t be discussed in Shirley Jacksons “The Lottery.” Jackson catches the reader’s attention by describing a typical day by using words such as “blossoming, clear and sunny skies” to attract the reader into believing a calm and hopeful setting which eventually turns dark. In this short story Jackson tells a tale of a sinister and malevolent town in America that conforms to the treacherous acts of murder in order to keep their annual harvest tradition alive. Jackson exposes the monstrosity of people within this society in this chilling tale. She allows the reader’s to ponder and lead them to believe that the lottery is actually a good thing; till she implements foreshadowing, to hint at the dreadfulness behind the lottery and its meaning. My goal in this paper is to discuss why Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a portrayed as a horror story, and the importance the townspeople used to glorify ritualistic killings, to appease to an unseeable force in return of good harvest for the upcoming year.
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Dehumanity In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson
1081 Words | 3 Pages
Set in 1948 and published in The New Yorker, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson describes a village ritual of sacrifice. Contrary to the positive feeling associated with the word “lottery,” the story strikes fear into the readers’ hearts as the winner is stoned to death. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” uses symbolism and genre conventions of a classic dystopian story to show the different ways in which human cruelty can occur.
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The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
3169 Words | 7 Pages
The story of “The Lottery” is a dark tale that gives the reader a window into a community blighted by an tradition propagated by ignorance; sending a message that reverberates with many events, ideas, and observations throughout the annals of time. Written by the great Shirley Jackson, this fable exemplifies how delusion and illogical thinking led to the terrifying and morose ending of Tessie Hutchinson's existence. Shirley Jackson was well known in her lifetime, but not necessarily as the literary master she is hailed as today. Jackson had great interest in the culture of witchcraft, and deeply incorporated this knowledge into one of her first short stories: “The Lottery.” While this influence greatly improved the haunted tone of the story, it also spawned various rumors regarding Shirley Jackson herself, being a reclusive bookish woman interested in the dark arts. However, just as the “witches” of Salem were mercilessly murdered for ambiguous reasons, so too was Tessie Hutchinson. Shirley Jackson saw the reflection of these poor souls within our very lives, and channeled their sorrowful essence into a meticulous story that is as moving as it is disturbing.
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A Feminist Perspective of The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
873 Words | 2 Pages
...l of their sexuality to men of secular and priestly authority. The design of the lottery is without flaw; it serves perfectly the patriarchal purpose of denying women consciousness by insisting that they remain part of nature, part of the fertile earth itself" (261).
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Argumentative Essay On The Lottery
1426 Words | 3 Pages
In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the winner is in fact the loser, making the idea of winning completely twisted. Clearly, there is blatant irony in this because when one wins a lottery, there is typically a good connotation connected to it. However in “The Lottery,” winning means death--something that the people in the village have become accustomed to. In this story “The Lottery,” which is described as something that would closely resemble a festival, turns out to be something very sinister. Once a name is drawn from the black box, that person is placed in the town square and is stoned to death by anyone, child or adult, who is willing to partake in the act.
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Gender Roles In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson
1131 Words | 3 Pages
Shirley Jackson presents the controversial in the gender roles and the position of the two genders in the story of “The Lottery”. The book creates the impression that the women in society are considered to be inferiors and not important since they are dominant and most of them are ignored while men on the other side are seen as the supreme being and people who have the authority over everyone in the society. Women can’t make a decision and can’t win an argument, but men’s decision, and arguments are final. This point is proven by the author as he illustrates by putting it across through some devices like the use of clever symbol, interesting plot development and the use of prevalent theme in the story. The importance
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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson