Winning a lottery is a good thing, right? Someone buys a ticket, then scratches it off or waits to see if they hold the winning number in their hands. However, that is not the case in Shirley Jackson’s world of “The Lottery”. In her critically acclaimed short story, a small town gathers in the village square and draws a name out of a box, and the ‘winner’ of their lottery is brutally stoned to death. All of this is done in a calm and orderly fashion, as well as without question. The lottery is a yearly event, and has been done for ages. “All of us took the same chance,”(Jackson) was uttered by the victim of the story, Tessie Hutchinson, is all but true. The town lottery of death is mandatory for all of its residents, young and old. Of course, someone could imagine that a story as gory as this one would stir up at least some controversy. Readers of newspapers and magazines that published “The Lottery” were outraged, and many canceled their subscriptions. Their reaction to the unexpected plot twist in the story led them to question who would even dream up such an abomination. Their answer was a woman named Shirley Jackson, a writer known for her dislocated, lonely characters that paralleled her depressed, college-dropout self. She was described as always writing, and “The Lottery” is included in her only collection of short stories. Jackson was expressing the theme that a person’s greatest importance is themselves through foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony in her short story, “The Lottery”.
From the very beginning of the story, there are many elements that suggest foreshadowing. This is apparent from the way the villagers interact with the black box that chooses who shall ‘win’ the Lottery. No one wanted to touch it or go near i...
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...es is wiped from this Earth.
Works Cited
Du Bose, Thomas. "The Lottery." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.
Hall, Joan Wylie. "Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)." Columbia Companion To The Twentieth-Century American Short Story (2000): 310-314. Literary Reference Center. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, 1991. 291-302.
Nelles, William. "The Lottery." Masterplots II: Women’S Literature Series (1995): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
Schaub, Danielle. "Shirley Jackson's Use of Symbols in 'The Lottery..'" Journal of the Short Story in English 14 (Spring 1990): 79-86. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.
Jackson, Shirley.. "The Lottery." Trans. Array Literature, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing. . Seventh. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2013. 250-256. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." Bridges: Literature Across Cultures. Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. p 849-854.
Thesis: The short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson found in Perrine's Literature written by Thomas R. Arp is a story full of symbolism.
In the short story ‘The Lottery’, Shirley Jackson delivers an effective and influential meaning to the reader. However, what makes the story so impactful? Shirley Jackson utilizes a combination of irony, symbolism and an objective point of view to accomplish this master piece. Irony creates suspense, symbolism creates foreshadowing and the point of view wraps this all up to create a story that represents people’s stupidity in blindly following tradition without questioning it.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. 4th ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. 643-54. Print.
What thoughts come to mind when you think of "The Lottery?" Positive thoughts including money, a new home, excitement, and happiness are all associated with the lottery in most cases. However, this is not the case in Shirley Jackson’s short story, "The Lottery." Here, the characters in the story are not gambling for money, instead they are gambling for their life. A shock that surprises the reader as she unveils this horrifying tradition in the village on this beautiful summer day. This gamble for their life is a result of tradition, a tradition that is cruel and inhumane, yet upheld in this town. Shirley Jackson provides the reader’s with a graphic description of violence, cruelty, and inhumane treatment which leads to the unexpected meaning of "The Lottery." Born in San Francisco, Jackson began writing early in her life. She won a poetry prize at age twelve and continued writing through high school. In 1937 she entered Syracuse University, where she published stories in the student literary magazine. After marriage to Stanley Edgar Hyman, a notable literary critic, she continued to write. Her first national publication “My Life with R.H. Macy” was published in The New Republic in 1941but her best-known work is “The Lottery.”(Lit Links or Reagan). Jackson uses characterization and symbolism to portray a story with rising action that surprises the reader with the unexpected odd ritual in the village. While one would expect “The Lottery” to be a positive event, the reader’s are surprised with a ritual that has been around for seventy-seven years , demonstrating how unwilling people are to make changes in their everyday life despite the unjust and cruel treatment that is associated with this tradi...
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." Gioia, Dana and R.S. Gwynn. The Art of the Short Story. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. 390-396.
Magill, Frank N. "Shirley Jackson." Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Salem Press, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1981. 1668-1674.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 5th Compact ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 136-41. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner. Boston: New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2013. 242-249. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Literature: A Portable Anthology. Gardner, Janet E.; Lawn, Beverly; Ridl, Jack; Schakel, Pepter. 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 242-249. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 989.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." Perrine's Literature: Structure Sound & Sense. 11th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010. 282. Print.
The short story “The Lottery” portrays the themes of death, tradition, and family. This short story was written by Shirley Jackson and was published in 1948. The short story is about a small village who gathers around for a tradition. They have lost the purpose of the tradition, but they keep on holding the lottery. All the families from the town participate; whoever receives the black dot in their paper, one of the family members will be stoned to death. In “The Lottery” the themes are represented within the characters and events in the village.