In her story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, utilizes symbolism to underline the importance of questioning tradition. Her story, “The Lottery,” begins in a small intimate village of about 300 people. In this little village, tradition is important because it must be practiced in order to help get better crops throughout the year. The way these crops are produce is by one person getting sacrificed via stoning once every year, and that is led by Mr. Summers. Though this tradition is practiced yearly, not everyone in this village is content about the sacrificial aspect of this tradition, creating conflict in the story when Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson, the one being sacrificed, chooses to rebel against this established institution tradition. Though she…
"In Jackson's "The Lottery," the townspeople face a unique opportunity to change the way they do things - more than once. In fact, every year the people can do away with the lottery but they are afraid of change and what it might bring. It is interesting to note that they may even be more afraid of the…
Usually, when one hears anything about a lottery, it is perceived as being a great fortune brought down upon whoever wins it, even if the person has done nothing to actually deserve it. After all, it is won only by a stroke of luck, an unforeseen and unexpected circumstance. But even so, it is supposed to bring wealth and luxury into the winner’s life. Not one person in today’s society would ever see the lottery as an unfortunate event that winning it would bring serious repercussions such as execution and death. On the contrary, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, uses irony to exemplify how people can illogically follow senseless traditions and ultimately demonstrates how society can blindly persecute innocent individuals.…
Throughout the course of human history we have dealt with the inevitable changing of the guard that occurs every few generations. The Lottery is an emotional look into the lives of the residents of a small town as they deal with the moral implications of holding on to a tradition that is so old that the intricacies of the ritual are all but lost to the people currently living in the town, or choosing to give up the archaic and barbaric traditions that where started with the founding of the town, and pursuing more progressive and civilized behavior.…
Shirley Jackson’s fictitious story entitled “The Lottery” is an allegorical examination into the underpinnings of societal rituals and traditions as well as how these rituals affect both social and political cultures. Although Jackson presents her literary work as a somewhat simplistic story about a village that holds an annual lottery every summer, the themes governing the story’s plot and underpinnings delve into a deeper analysis regarding the effects and consequences of a political oligarchy on its citizens. Rooted in long-standing tradition, the lottery is conducted in a way that illustrates the hierarchy of an organization of people controlled by [misguided] ideology—albeit somewhat lost in translation over the many years—and outcome.…
As society changes, some traditions evolve, but some remain stagnant. Tradition is a substantial part of our life today, but decades ago it was a lifestyle. Anyone with an objection to a tradition was met with dire consequences. In “The Lottery,” the fortunate or in this case the unfortunate winner would be stoned to death. “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock” (Jackson 1). This quote shows that the lottery runs on tried-and-true process, and the whole town passionately followed the ritual. The participants were of the view that the sacrifice would bring in bountiful corn during harvest time. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson proficiently uses distinctive setting…
“All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.” Friedrich Engles says it best when he says this because at some point one social class is always at the top or the bottom of the hierarchy. However each groups fights, either to hold their place of move up. In the short story “The Lottery,” Jackson shows how the events can be connected to socialism because the characters are supposed to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the community. Politics and economics are contributing factors to the sacrificing for the community because powerful positions and social classes feed from the towns’ peoples’ feelings and emotions.…
(Introduction) “The Lottery,” a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a woman who has been selected for sacrifice by a lottery drawing. Tessie Hutchinson, and the rest of her town, are unfeeling about how the annual sacrifice affects the selected. However, they carry on with their tradition year after year, with no intent to make changes to meet modern day morals and needs. “The Lottery” is about blindly following tradition, the awareness of how cruel a practice sacrificing is, and how one’s mindset can change when they are the chosen one.…
In Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” it is evident that conforming to society and sticking with tradition can lead to outweighing personal morals./be a burden on the lives of people. Although The Lottery was a tradition that has been occurring for years, nobody sticks up to support their morals to challenge The Lottery. Not only does The Lottery limit the rights of many, but many other expectations in their society do too.…
The short story by Shirley Jackson “The Lottery” serves as a mirror to see our own society and rituals at an extreme. Throughout the story the author normalizes the characters’ inhumane ritual so the reader would be able to understand the underlining meaning of the story. In our society there are rituals that we do not dare to question because they have been embedded into our lives. The character Old Man Warner justifies such rituals by saying, on page 142, “There’s always been a lottery.” he himself not entirely understanding why it is done. Shirley Jackson wants the reader to understand how oblivious society is to itself, and shows how it would be if it were to be looked upon in an outer perspective.…
There are a myriad of different possibilities for the theme of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, but to me the story represents the concept of blame. As humans, we sometimes feel a need to target someone as the root of our problems, even if we know that they were in no way involved. This makes us feel better because we are able to take out our anger or stress on someone else. In some cases this person may be picked at random, such as Tessie was in the story. This can at times be unfair to the target, considering that in some cases they may have done absolutely nothing wrong. Tessie speaks for these unfortunate people when she shrieks, “ It isn’t fair, it isn’t right!”…
Sociologist Edward Shils defined tradition as, "It is anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present" (Shils 12).In other words, a tradition could be any material or intangible attributes handed down by one generation to the next. On the other hand, anything which was handed down from the past generations is not a tradition. The validity of a tradition is established through the process of thoughts, imagination and actions of past generations. On his book "Tradition", Edward Shils wrote, "The presence of something from the past does not entail any explicit expectation that it should be accepted, appreciated, reenacted, or otherwise assimilated" (Shils 12). Reevaluation of the validity of a tradition is not always performed. As a result, traditions keep getting reenacted and…
“ The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, shows the corruption in a village whose people treat life with insignificance. Through the use of literary devices, Jackson portrays how practices in traditions can be barbaric;ultimately, resulting in persecution.…
It is often said that there is strength in numbers. While it is true that a large group of people has more power than an individual, a single person within a large group will almost always conform in some way. This weakens the individual and leads to fewer new ideas in order to maintain group status and agreement. Many times, rituals or ideas are allowed and accepted just because they are favored by a majority or have been part of that society for so long that they have become almost like a tradition. In "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson uses alarming images to guide the reader to understand the futility and foolishness of blind obedience to these rituals. The lottery “selection” emphasizes the importance of questioning what is right in front of you instead of just conforming mindlessly.…
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is nothing less than a powerful story about a society that gathers once per year and holds a lottery. But this is not a lottery with a winner; it is a lottery with a loser. “The Lottery” is a chilling story because it depicts a sense of normalcy among the towns’ people when they randomly decided to kill a neighbor by practically just drawing straws. This story really asks the question, are rituals always a good thing? If rituals are a good or bad thing do we even know why we do it half the time? “The Lottery”, shows us that even though tradition may have been happening for years doesn’t mean that the traditions we choose to follow are beneficial.…