Shirley Ardell Mason

Taking the Same Chance: A Formal Approach to “The Lottery” How would one handle the knowledge that today was the day in which someone amongst the community, including oneself, would undoubtedly die? In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery” tradition calls for an annual sacrifice in order to keep a town’s crops plentiful. While this may seem extreme, the idea of allowing such things to continue based on the notion that it is the way things have always been done is none too absent in most areas of the…

“To an Athlete Dying Young” & “Ex-Basketball Player” In Both, “To an Athlete dying Young” and “Ex basketball player”, We experience several poetic devices that compare and contrast eachother in these fairly similar poems. In the poem written by John Updike, “Ex-Basketball Player”, Flick a fictional character is stuck in a loop and his daunting past wrecks his current future. In this poem flicks past shows a young basketball player is praised for setting several records and being a country…

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a peculiar ritual occurs every year. Rather than what mundanely the connotation of the lottery, which is conventionally a positive acquiring victory, this type of lottery will have detrimental consequences. By normalizing the lottery, Jackson edifications most of the citizen’s fear. To plenarily understand “The Lottery,” it avails to analyze the elements of theme, characterization, and symbolism. A reoccurring theme in “The Lottery” is the…

Linking Detrimental Traditions to The Lottery Influential, award-winning author Shirley Jackson depicts a dystopian society in her world-renowned short story “The Lottery”. Jackson irrefutably illustrates how society can follow antiquated traditions to their detriment; consequently, empowering readers to form cogent connections to equivalently destructive traditions. Calamitous practices are present in multifarious countries in contemporary society: the tradition of female genital mutilation,…

mistakes, but what happens when people make some without even knowing it? In the two short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, the authors write about this exact topic. They express in their stories the consequences of some mistakes from characters that end up to be more than just consequential. Although “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson may differ immensely, the stories’ themes similarly convey that blindly accepting something…

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursala Le Guin, they are different and similar in ways that one person is being sacrificed for happiness. Sacrifice in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” if for the happiness of the entire town. Adults in this story see a child suffer and just let it pass by like it’s an everyday ordeal. In this story it is thought the child suffering is an everyday thing. “Their happiness… depend wholly on this child’s abominable…

family member has their own unique role in society. Men, women, and children have separate but intertwined lives that play out on a daily basis. This concept is commonly expressed in literature. One author who clarifies the role of each counterpart is Shirley Jackson: mother and author of The Lottery. In Jackson’s novel, the social and business roles of men, women, and children are clearly defined. The role of men in this novel is to lead their household. Mr. Summers says, “‘Now, I'll read the…

But in this fictional town winning the lottery is not all that great, because if you win, you get the fabulous prize of death by stones. Shirley Jackson’s short story, “ The Lottery” uses the “Black box” as a symbol to convey an underlying message that society isolates those who go against society’s ideals and that death comes without warning. In Shirley Jackson’s short story the black box represents how death will not ask question and will attack without warning. It is illustrated as…

The lottery and Stone throwing in India has many similarities. The lottery is a tradition they did to sacrifice a person and stone them to death, although its fiction it is based on reality. Stone throwing in India is similar to the lottery because people also sacrafice themselves and gets stoned to death by the other oponent. In the following paragraphs I am going to discuss the comparison between The lottery and Stone throwing in India: An annual Bash. The Lottery and Stone throwing…

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, discusses a distinct class structure, which dictates the roles of the powerful and the powerless. The society appears to be egalitarian; however, it becomes abundantly clear that it is a capitalist society where oppression of the masses is evident. Those that accumulate the most wealth in the village, are those that become the most powerful; ultimately demonstrating the division of power and labour. The black box is crucial in the process of the lottery and is…