In ‘The Lottery,’ the idea of loneliness surfaces as the villagers still continue to follow their tradition of the lottery even though the other villages has stopped. In ‘A Good Story’ the image of Native American’s being segregated from the community and almost isolating themselves leading to them only attempting to be around their race. In ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ the image of needing to be accompanied rises as Terri, in the story, goes to the extremes of love. In ‘Janus’ the thought of attachment because of dissatisfaction eventually leading to loneliness gives an idea of the seriousness of self.
In ‘The Lottery’, the idea of loneliness surfaces as the villagers still continue to follow their tradition of the lottery even though the other villages has stopped. To support this claim, critic Helen E. Nebeker wrote, “Shirley Jackson has raised these lesser themes to one encompassing a comprehensive, compassionate, and fearful understanding of man trapped in the web spun from his own need to explain and control the incomprehensible universe around him, a need no longer answered by the web of old traditions.” Nebeker’s …show more content…
To support this claim, the author of “Ann Beattie’s Implications” William S. Wilson wrote, “Language implies that what we believe and what we love are one and the same, and Beattie follows, searching for trustworthy appearances, for something that can be believed, that is for something that can be loved, and in the stories of Ann Beattie, who doesn’t seem to believe much for one second, what she loves is that it is something that she believes.” Wilson expresses in the quote that as he studies the works of Beattie, the more he is familiar with her work and what her personality is. The story “Janus” shows the idea that Beattie believes the idea that love can be connected to an object because that is something she can hold on too. In the story, it shows that Andrea is capable of linking emotions and memories to a piece of furniture but ultimately left to wallow in her loneliness. Beattie is trying to imply that you’ll just end up lonely and sad if you are ‘two-faced’ or too attached to a person that you symbolize something too or just holding a secret. Relating to the story, the quote suggests that as Beattie gets more attached to the bowl as she believes that it was her lover and brings her good fortune. The result of it will be that as she is more attached, the more she will feel stuck and lonely as she is unhappy with her present state