Human Sacrifice vs. Ritual Murder in The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

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Imagine this; it is 9am, the sun is out and even though the children are playing , but before the day is done, someone will find themselves the winner of the lottery. However, it is not the lottery that most are familiar with. In 1988 author Judy Oppenheimer conducted an interview with author Shirley Jackson, the author of '' The Lottery'' . In this interview Shirley explained why she wrote the short story in the following excerpt ; " I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives " (Oppenheimer 1988 ). In order to identify the key elements of the story, one must illustrate and discuss how these certain elements effect the author’s main purpose of this short story which was to shock the reader with horror.
In the short story “The Lottery" the author Shirley Jackson begins the story by painting the picture of serenity using the following quote. “The morning of June 27 was clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day” ( 247; chap. 7) . This statement itself suggest that the day in question was just like any other day. However, her intentions were to put the reader at ease with the thought of a sunny day. Most people would be preparing for the summer and all the perks that come along with it, like; fishing, traveling, or even visiting relatives someplace else. Shirley continued to paint a vivid picture of the things happening at that particular moment. She introduced the idea of a lottery in the first paragraph of the story stating that " in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two day...

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...1/03/02/ritual-murder/>.
"The Lottery" Analysis of Major Characters." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, LLC. 2007. Web. 26
Nov. 2013.
Staff, Editorial. "human sacrifice." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica,
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sacrifice>.
Oppenheimer, Judy. "Shirley Jackson." Shirley Jackson and "The Lottery". N.p., n.d. Web. 5
Dec. 2013. .
"43 Bible Verses about Human Sacrifice." What Does the Bible Say About Human Sacrifice?.
N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2013. . ("Holy Bible "English Stand Version
(E SV)

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