Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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What comes to mind when someone says the word lottery? It is usually associated with positive connotations such as prize, success, good fortune, and winner but, could there be something dark and sinister about this word? Nowadays the lottery is seen as a mean of raising money by selling numbered tickets that are purchased by many for a chance to win a huge monetary prize. However, towards the end of Shirley Jackson´s short story, The Lottery, there proves to be an unusual implication for this concept since the victor gets a different form of “prize”. In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson the villagers start gathering in the town square to participate in a lottery run by Mr. Summers, the town coordinator. In some towns there are so many people that

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