Dehumanization In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

Set in 1948 and published in The New Yorker, the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson describes an annual ritual, in a small village that leads to death for an unlucky winner. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” follows the genre conventions of a classic dystopian short story through the use of symbolism and connection between specific themes from the story to many common, yet profound and complex characteristics of dystopian literature in order to implicitly and thoughtfully convince the audience to protest against the dehumanization of society and random, pointless killings as well as become aware of the government. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to show the dehumanization of the villagers. Shirley Jackson introduces the story to the audience with a warm and pleasant approach to suggest that the lottery is just another typical annual celebration, where the winner will obtain valuable prizes. The story, then, quickly changes direction when the children gather and make “a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and [guard] it against the raids of the other boys” (Jackson 1). This leaves the audience wonders about …show more content…
“The Lottery” was published just after World War II, where numerous slaughters of innocent humans occurred, which was majorly the result of people aimlessly follow the idea of Nazism. Jackson wants to relate the cry for justice of Mrs. Hutchinson to many innocent victims during World War II so the audience at that time could empathize and understand how the victims of wars felt when they were killed through no fault of their own. As this and the above passages show, Shirley Jackson is pointing out the immorality of random and pointless killings, reminiscent the Holocaust and bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted from blindly following ideology and