Shirley Phelps-Roper

perseverance to which most readers would never be able to compare. However, this unbreakable focus ultimately leads to his failure of breaking the barrier and to his tragic death. Tessie, an independent thinker from the short story “The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson in 1948, goes against the traditional social norms and viewpoints of her townspeople. However, this outcry for a change in morals fails to save her life as she is cruelly stoned to death. Personal opinions, beliefs, values…

Shirley Jackson “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson was born December 14,1916 in San Francisco. She grew up in California, where as a young teenager began writing poetry and short stories. She attended college at the University of Rochester and withdrew after a year so she could practice writing. She then attended Syracuse University in 1937, met her husband Stanly Edgar Hyman. Together they started a literary magazine Spectre. After graduation in 1940 they moved to Greenwich Village. Shirley had…

The Lottery With an exciting title like “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, one might have a happy, optimistic outlook on the short story they are about to read. Instead, “The Lottery” is a short story that takes place in a small rural town where one’s luck can change with a representation of a piece of paper. After reading the tale, one might feel like they just read an insert from a Stephen King horror story, but that is not how Jackson begins the journey. Once a year, the town’s people gather…

In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” there are many contradictions between readers that leaves so many unanswered questions and doesn’t have a broad meaning about as to why the author decided to publish such a story. There are many symbolical meanings in the story and plenty of detailed emotions about how the characters are feeling, their gestures, and how they communicate with one another. Jackson’s short story is considered to be one the most loved and hated stories of the 20th…

an outsider is “a person who does not belong to or is not accepted as part of a particular group or organization.” In other words, there is not a connection binding the person to fit into a particular group. In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, portrays what it feels like to be an outsider of any group, just because a person believes something everyone else doesn’t, acts different, or generally new to the crowd. Being pushed to the side and ignored because of race, gender,…

black plays an important role in this story. Black is culturally used to portray darkness, evil, and death. With the removal of light, darkness prevails. The black box that people draw the slip of paper for the lottery is one of the objects that Shirley Jackson uses to foreshadow the end of the story. The black box represents the tradition of the lottery in that village. It is even older than the oldest man in the village. Nobody in town really knows the history of the box except it was made…

During the summer of the years 1133 to 1855 a famous fair came into London, most commonly known as the Bartholomew Fair. Hosted in Smithfield, otherwise known as the location popular for slaughterhouses and public executions, the fair was a trading event that attracted Londoners of all classes. Ben Jonson uses this factor to his advantage with his play entitled, “Bartholomew Fair.” The type of people, activities, and crimes that occur at the fair gives Jonson the opportunity to reflect on his…

For instance, in ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’, the overarching theme of incomprehensibility and absurdity is explored through the coin-flipping scenes and throughout the play. In the opening scene, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip a coin, it lands heads-up eighty-five times consecutively. Even then, although Guildenstern is ‘well alive to the oddity of it’, he attempts to make sense of the strange phenomenon, applying the mathematical law of probability to the problem and speculating…

The Fate of Tessie Hutchinson The term lottery creates a vision of winning something of value. In the short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, Jackson took the meaning of the lottery and put a dark twist to it. Jackson gives an everyday feel to the story as if the annual ceremony “the lottery” is a peaceful day for the towns people. The reader infers that this is a positive outcome based on society’s understanding of what a lottery is; however, the lottery takes an unforeseen twist that…

Comparison of “The Most Dangerous Game” and the “Young Goodman Brown” This essay will compare two short stories: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. Works do not have similarities at the first sight. Stories are about a century apart (were published in 1835 and 1924 respectively), have different plots, types of characters and conclusions. However, it is possible to make a comparison and find both similarities and differences in these stories.…