The Lottery Shirley Jackson Capital Punishment Analysis

The Lottery is a controversial fictional short story that delivers a powerful message of violence within the culture of villages in New England. Shirley Jackson did a wonderful job capturing the attention of many readers, as well as capturing an intense emotional reaction. Whenever discussing death, capital punishment, and or murder there are a variety of emotions that form: resulting in debate and extreme views. The ritual discussed within The Lottery began to be compared to Capital Punishment. Earl Martin author of Tessie Hutchinson and the American System of Capital Punishment, Maryland Law Review, discusses his view of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery “there are troubling parallels between Ms. Jackson’s story and our American system of capital punishment. In fact, it is far too easy to draw comparisons between the events of June 27th in Ms. Jackson’s fictional village and how we send a selected few of our fellow citizens to their death” (Martin 2000). Capital punishment is nothing like The Lottery, and has the potential of saving more lives than it takes. …show more content…
For example, Ted Bundy was a; kidnapper, rapist, and serial killer to a numerous amount women and young girls. Throughout the 1970’s many cases of; missing women, rape attacks, as well as murders were unsolved because of his brutal crimes and ability to slip away. Thus, he was an extremely dangerous person that would have harmed plenty of more individuals if he was not convicted. Furthermore, he was sentenced to death, and individuals across the nation were more than understanding as to why he was given that conviction. To this day, some of the victims’ bodies have yet to be found, and there is still an unrequited number of people he had harmed throughout his