Literary Devices In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

English 102
September10, 2012
The Lottery “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, focuses around an unnamed village on a particular day in the mid summer on June the twenty seventh the time the annual lottery usually took place. The main purpose the lottery served was to make the happening of enough rain in order to have good corn crops the following month after the ritual. In a way the story evolves around the misguided belief that when the villagers sacrificed one of their own to what may seem to be or give the idea some sort of rain god, the after result would be that they would have good crops the very next year. The villagers also believed if they did not do the traditional ritual yearly, then they would regress to harder and
tougher times. It then goes to show how one villager was unlucky to win the lottery and was murdered by the villagers. “The lottery: takes place in a small unnamed village with a population of about three hundred people. There is not much information on the full description of the setting but when reading the story one would think the time period of this story would have taken place in the earlier times of the eighteen hundreds. The villagers are fairly close with one another and they have a tradition which might be considered extreme known as the lottery. The lottery is based on a black box filled with little slips of paper that the villagers randomly pick from and when a villager picks a slip of paper with a black dot on it, then they unfortunately have been chosen as the winner of the lottery. The setting is one literary device in “The Lottery” because it sort of adds to the horror of the story that makes us imagine the story taking place any where in a small town that we might know of or live in.
Also the day the lottery takes place described as “a day in mid summer” indicates the period of unconstrained growth and recklessness. Another literary device in the story, is the genre by showing horror and realism in placing the story in a generic small town and reviling the fate of the lottery winner at the end. A third literary device in the story, is the tone by showing detachment and calms of the tone through out the story from the beginning describing the sunny day, to witnessing the execution of one of the villagers at the end. A possibly good theme of “The Lottery” is that people should be aware of the dangers of blindly following
tradition. The author’s purpose could be perceived in may ways because it could have many different meanings of direction. For example one purpose could be to try to convey or show the readers how it is to follow tradition and to conform to what everyone else is doing because they have been doing it for so long. Another one would be to try to shock the readers with a graphic dramatization of the point less violence and general inhumanity in their own lives. Another purpose of the author could be to entertain but also trick the readers at the end of the story simply because they were expecting a different type of ending to the story. Some literary criticisms about “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is that when it was published in the New Yorker in nineteen forty eight ,post war readers where horrified of the brutality and extremeness of the story simply after witnessing and living through the war with the Nazis and Japanese.
“The Lottery” at the time when it was published was so horrifying that most readers simply could not handle it so many complained. The story was also band in some places like in the Union of south Africa because is was some what in a kind of way offensive. The story has been described as being “ a chilling tale of conformity gone mad”. another literary criticism of this story was that the author used comedy and irony to suggest an underline evil, hypocrisy, and weakness of human
kind. My personal reaction to “The Lottery” obviously was when I saw the title, I thought it would be a story that would involve somebody winning some sort of big rewarding prize, then he or she would live happily ever after. Turns out in this story winning the lottery was not some thing any body would want to win if they valued their life. Reading this story made me realize that some things in life that may sound good, positive, or exciting may in fact turn out to be something negative and problematic.

Works Cited
“Analysis of”The Lottery”, a Short Story by Shirly Jackson.”YAHOO Voices.2 nov 2005: n.page.Print..
“Literary Criticism: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. “Dark Party Review. N.p., 17 Aug 2006. Web. 24 Sep.2013.
Shmoop Editorial Team. “The Lottery” Shmoop.com. Shmoop Univsity, inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Sep 2013