Shirley MacLaine

The Lottery: How Tradition Normalizes Radical Behavior Regardless of the Roots In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, there is a very disturbing and unspeakable act that takes place. Now most people would think that what this town practices is not correct and very immoral. But one must look at the town in one way, that their tradition that they have practiced all of their lives has normalized these unspeakable acts. Tradition has affected the townsfolk to where killing is a normal thing and they…

Shirley Jackson uses “The Lottery” to highlight and showcase.What it looks like when people give up their true identity or morals to fit into their society.In the short story “The Lottery” is story about how a certain village gathers every year on June 27th to sacrifice one of their own people for corn to make as they call it the (Corn God’s) happy. Tessie Hutchinson is the lucky person who gets to exploit the difficulty of the true cost of the lottery that the village old every year.Tessie…

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…

Let’s play a game of Russian roulette. Generations of tradition passed on as the norm; never to challenge its significance. A box created holds slips of death. How can one person determine the fate of another. Shirley Jackson presents a character in “The Lottery,” that has control of the village’s annual events. In contrast to that one main event, which has the purpose of choosing one’s fate. As you read further into the story you see how the townspeople go about their annual routine to…

Tension, suspense, mystery, and anticipation are feelings often inspired by Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”. It took Jackson less than two hours to write “The Lottery”. Being shorter than 3,500 words, it is a short story by all structural standards, yet its content outraged the U.S. population. The story was banned in many schools, from a number of libraries, and throughout all of South Africa. One of the many factors that caused this reaction was the tone or “mood” of the story.…

beliefs they never questioned. However, they are also different in the sense that in one story the theme is about society’s expectations and in the other, the theme focuses on how to handle an unplanned pregnancy and how sensitive the topic is. Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, takes place during the summer in the late 1950’s. There’s an alternate circle of life that occurs in this town during crop season. Every year, these small town villagers come together on June 27th to participate in a…

Symbolism is a language or form of communication used to convey, or carry the meaning through the use of symbols. Symbolism can also be an object, person, or a situation, that has another meaning rather than its actual meaning. For example, the object a (chain) can symbolize the coming together of things. Maybe a very a simple thing such as the color red can symbolize other meanings such as blood, passion, and even maybe danger. In this short story by The lottery is about a village that…

The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” are two different stories that have similarities. Based on story lines of both they might have more similarities than differences. “The Lottery” mainly talk about that a citizen of their village is sacrificed each year and the citizen is killed by stone. Comparably, in The Hunger Games, 24 citizens are chosen to fight to the death to leave only one citizen to survive. This paper will focus on similarities between these two stories: blindly following tradition,…

The unifying theme of “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is fading tradition. The villagers are still partaking in a murderous tradition that does not have any meaning to them anymore. Each new generation is slowly getting away from the original tradition. As each year comes and goes a little bit of the tradition fades away. There are a lot of examples of fading tradition in the story, but the ones that are going to used in this essay are Old Man Warner, changes in the ritual, Tessie Hutchison,…

expecting it to be herself with the dotted paper. Incidences where people are diagnosed with incurable diseases and randomly struck by cars are common, but one believes it’ll happen to them. Everyday you live is truly a lottery of life. 5. Shirley Jackson shows that humans often let things happen without question as long as the society condones such behaviour. No one dares question or speak up about this ritual because it has existed for as long as anyone can remember. Traditions…