Main Conflict In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” we read about a fictional small town which observes other communities both small and larger, throughout a contemporary America. Throughout this story we learn about a ritual which is known as “the lottery.” Throughout this paper I’ll be discussing the climax, main conflict and how this story relates to ‘The Hook’ in a scary and suspenseful way but first starting off with a short summary of the story. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” a classic American short story with a shocking twist ending as well as its insightful interpretation on cultural traditions. The story begins with all the villagers meeting in the town square for the lottery just as if it was another day. While kids are playing with stones the …show more content…
This quote best speaks the climax of the story “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and force the slip of paper out of her hand. It has a black spot on it, …Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd” (Jackson). This quote resembles the suspense right before the reaping and we see that though it was Bill’s wife that was chosen. We see that he does nothing. He doesn’t stand up for or try and protect her of what’s to …show more content…
society, because of the tradition of the village. The tradition is that the village sacrifices one of their people each year by stoning them, where the victim is to be chosen by lottery. There is no real reason for the murder other than the fact that it is a tradition. This quote best represents the main conflict in the story and what it was like for a member of the village to be chosen in the lottery “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. ‘It isn’t fair,’ she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying ‘Come on, come on, everyone’” (Jackson). This quote represents how Tessie is trying to tell the people that this is wrong and as you can see the others don’t care because they proceed to stone her. From personal experience, we conducted a similar example, during my senior year in high school we read this story in my AP English class. The example was that everyone had pulled a piece of paper out of a bag and who ever had the black dot on their piece of paper had to stand up in front of the class as we all insulted them. By us insulting one of our own peers it represented the stoning of Tessie. Though no one got the paper with a black dot it created the suspense and uneasiness of us not knowing who was going to have stand up and take the