The Role Of Family Obligations In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Improved Essays
In the anecdotes “The Lottery”, “To Build a Fire” and “A Worn Path”, a bibliomaniac can delineate the etiological mannerism of family obligations. Characteristically the majority of humans speculates safeguarding, nourishing, and fighting for their family is customary.
In the story “The Lottery” by Jackson the townspeople engaged in execrable ordinance labeled as the lottery. The ceremonial conference intentions are to select an individual to immolate. Jackson wrote, “Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted” (par. 46). Tessie verbalized out against the discreditable sacrament, so the townspeople would relinquish Bill as the victim. Humans ordinarily display grandiose reactions

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    The creation of the pile of the stones is one of the first indicators that there is something peculiar about the village. The names of the conductors of the lottery also suggests that something is not ethical about the practice of the lottery. The…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This particular quote symbolizes how humiliated Mrs. Hutchinson felt that she was the center of attention, crying out in agony and how people can become too caught up in…

    • 1081 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Shirley Jackson 's "the Lottery" is a short story about the faults of tradition, dealing with multiple forms of traditions. Given that the "the Lottery" presents the idea of tradition as superfluous in circumstances regarding social negativity; also given the time period that the short story, "the Lottery" was published--the year of 1949--which is only one year before the second wave of feminism began (from 1950-1970) with these two givens one could assume that one of the traditions that the short story was eluding to was the traditional gender roles within the society of the story itself, and the society of those who read it. Through "the Lottery" Jackson conveys a feminist perspective via three themes: sex and gender, family, and tradition.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The other villages are giving up the lottery and the people are arguing about whether or not they should give it up too. “Some places have already quit lotteries”, Mrs. Adams said. “Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly, “Pack of young fools.” The people are pulling apart from each other here. But when people have family gathering traditions it pushes them together.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Did you know that people are known to deceive on an average of 30% of the people that they come into contact with on an average basis. Some believe that people can be altruistic based on a moral code. Others tend to be more realistic and understand that people are prone to lies and will have a hidden agenda, and fail to share their meaning. Others believe you can be truthful and also have a hidden agenda. While most people want to be truly good, it is obvious that this is not the case.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” depicts a village tradition which ends with one of the villagers being chased down and stoned by her friends, family, and neighbors. Such an outrageous and violent ritual must have strong reasoning behind it; however, none of the villagers really know why they do it. The lottery is a tradition that has been going on for years and is generally accepted. Shirley Jackson uses generational conflict in “The Lottery” to show that following tradition can cause motivation to be blinded.6 The loss of traditions over the years demonstrates how following tradition can lead to blinded motivation. The ritual once involved many traditions including, “a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery” (Jackson…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Danger in Tradition In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, a village prepares for their annual tradition of the lottery in which the townsfolk stone a person to death. The ritual was originally conducted to bring a bountiful harvest of corn, however, the meaning behind the sacrifice seemed to fade out while the tradition itself persisted. As surprising as it may seem, one can see instances of blindly followed tradition in today’s society: trick-or-treating on Halloween, blowing out the candles on birthday cakes, and eating turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving. These practices occur like clockwork across the United States and other parts of the world with little to no real reasoning behind them besides the excuse of tradition, erasing their purpose.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In many of her writings, Shirley Jackson uses adaptations of her life and personal journeys of alienation from a comfortable yet dysfunctional childhood, combined with the miseries of an unhealthy marriage while raising and projecting a happy family, "Life Among the Savages", which caused her devaluation by traditional male critics who had difficulty reconciling Jackson’s housewife status with her production of Gothic narratives (Hague), to the many riveting and haunting short stories, “The Lottery”, that would quickly become one of the best- known and most frequently anthologized short stories in English (Franklin) and to this day still leave a magnitude of her readers in wonderment and dismay. The prominent Shirley Jackson, legendary American…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Lottery This short story begins with a scene in a small village of polite folks gathering together for an event that happens every year in the town square. The reader is introduced to an enlightening story which gives the idea that someone will end up winning a grand prize. Instead, this lottery is held in the village in which one person will end their life by being stoned to death.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How much longer must ignorance and pointless violence continue before we will start to change? The answer to this question may appear simple and in Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” the satire is obvious. By using literary criticisms readers can evaluate more in depth what the story is actually trying convey. Two major literary criticisms that will discussed in detail are Psychological Theory and Historical Criticism and New Historicism. Psychological Theory basically deals with the psychological aspect or the mindset of a person.…

    • 1987 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Horror genre is a literature genre of fiction which has the characteristic or the capacity to create scare or frighten their readers. This genre popularity increased in incredible ways in the last couple of years with the development of the movies and television industries. This genre such as in a movie or in a book has incredible popularity and grabs the attention of a big number of audience Some enjoy that adrenaline feeling, being in danger, expecting the unknown, death, all the feelings and more people experiences at the moment of reading or watching horror, some of the people really enjoys it, other people prefer not to watch the movie, just like me. Among the genius works of literature of the horror genre I would like to name and…

    • 1052 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Smith’s A Dead Man Laughing discusses the life of her father’s infatuation with comedy, and how it became a vehicle for discussing deeper issues and its associated impacts. Smith’s usage of personal observations and irony along with strong imagery and her unique style of description allowed for the development of insights and maintenance of a cohesive flow of ideas. Thus, allowing her to craft a compelling masterpiece.…

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jackson’s Tradition During a summer day bright with sunlight, a town celebrates an ancient tradition that concludes with the sacrifice of the winning leader of the household. Mr. Hutchinson picks the winning black-smudged slip of paper from the infamous black box, but his wife objects, resulting in her immediate five family members having to draw from the box. She gives her husband a second chance at life, but unfortunately, the second drawing results in Mrs. Hutchinson’s unjustifiable death (293-95). In order to exhibit how immensely against cultural ignorance she feels, Jackson utilizes tone, symbolism and motif, and irony to emphasize her theme, the idea that one should not follow tradition for the sake of following tradition because supporting a custom with unknown origins results in long term cultural defamation.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For my short essay, I have chosen to write about The Lottery. The lottery to me provides epic amount of material to write about in this essay. In this essay, I would like to contribute my take on what I believe what Shirley Jackson meant by her characterization of character presented in this short story as well as try my hand at trying to decipher the message she was attempting to get across from her conflict and ending. First, Shirley Jackson describe boys playing with stones on a nice summer day while the girls look on, fathers discuss “men” things, and mothers discussing “women” things while reuniting with their husbands.…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays