Plot over "The Lottery"
An Imperfect Society Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery” in 1948 with a purpose in mind. Upon hearing the title, many readers think about a lottery in people want to win due to the fact that they could win millions of dollars. However, this is not the case in Jackson’s version where the lottery is one in which the winner is stoned to death. Jackson’s focus in this story is that society is flawed, imperfect, and sometimes stuck in the past. She declared that her purpose was “to shock the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson 239). Her goal is for the reader to notice these traits of society upon evaluating the plot, point of view, and character of “The Lottery.”
Plot is a sequence of events that make up a story. Plot is not only one event, but a sequence of many events that include exposition, complicating incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. The plot of “The Lottery” begins with the exposition, which is what the reader is first exposed to. The exposition of the story is that it is the morning of June 27th and it is a beautiful day. The weather is clear and sunny with the warmth of a typical summer day. Flowers are blooming and the grass is green. The approximate 300 villagers gather in the square at sometime around ten ‘clock to participate in the town’s annual lottery, which takes less than two hours to complete. The complicating incident, also known as the problem, in the story is that somebody has to “win” the lottery, which has been a tradition of the village since before anybody there was born. The main problem with that is that nobody wants to win the lottery, because whoever wins the lottery is then stoned to death. The rising action occurs as tension builds just before and during the drawing as the villagers are curious to who has the black spot on their slip of paper that they drew.
The climax, where the problem is
Plot is a sequence of events that make up a story. Plot is not only one event, but a sequence of many events that include exposition, complicating incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. The plot of “The Lottery” begins with the exposition, which is what the reader is first exposed to. The exposition of the story is that it is the morning of June 27th and it is a beautiful day. The weather is clear and sunny with the warmth of a typical summer day. Flowers are blooming and the grass is green. The approximate 300 villagers gather in the square at sometime around ten ‘clock to participate in the town’s annual lottery, which takes less than two hours to complete. The complicating incident, also known as the problem, in the story is that somebody has to “win” the lottery, which has been a tradition of the village since before anybody there was born. The main problem with that is that nobody wants to win the lottery, because whoever wins the lottery is then stoned to death. The rising action occurs as tension builds just before and during the drawing as the villagers are curious to who has the black spot on their slip of paper that they drew.
The climax, where the problem is
Cited: Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2007. 239-245. Print.