Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery is a short story filled with ironies. The title itself already gives a contrary meaning to the first thing that comes to the reader’s minds. The Lottery in this story refers to the tradition wherein the winner of the lottery would be stoned to death. This is divergent to what we first think when we hear the word lottery; winning a big amount of money. The story begins with a clear and thorough description of the town square in which the story is set. It begins‚ “The
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Blind Obedience in “The Lottery” “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson written and published in 1948‚ takes place on June 27th in a small town of three hundred people. Villagers gather together at around ten o’clock for one of the main rituals called ‘the lottery‘‚ which takes place in the central square. “The lottery was conducted as were the square dances” (Jackson 31) illustrating the timely scheduled event. It is a normal day with “the fresh warmth of a full summer day” (Jackson 1). The men arte having
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reading “The Lottery‚” by Shirley Jackson. Jackson uses irony to suggest an underlying evil‚ hypocrisy‚ and weakness of human kind. Jackson shows many important lessons about human nature in this short story including barbaric traditions in a supposedly civilized village‚ the community’s hypocrisy‚ and how violence and cruelty take place. "The Lottery" tells the story of an annual tradition in a small village‚ where the people are close and tradition is paramount. The Lottery is a yearly event
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Unknown Citizen‚ written by W.H Auden‚ is a poem that will be compared with the lottery‚ written by Shirley Jackson. Both‚ the short story and poem‚ share 2 literature devices in common. They exhibit Irony and symbolism within them. The usage of both will be compared to acknowledge the similarities between the two different literature styles. Although they may not fall into the same genre‚ both the Unknown Citizen and The Lottery share common literature devices to provide
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the short story‚ “The Lottery”‚ by Shirley Jackson and the movie‚ “The Village”‚ directed by M. Night Shyamalan‚ both the short story and the film employ the theme of traditions and rituals to comment on the danger of blindly conforming‚ the different attitude in performing the tradition and how unfairness is parallel to the wellbeing of the community. Both the short story and the movie share the ideology of blindly believing and conforming to traditions. In “the Lottery”‚an annual ritual consisting
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1.In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery‚” a “lottery” is a tradition which takes place each year where the whole town gathers and the man of the house takes a folded slip from a black box. Once each man has a slip‚ they are allowed to unfold the paper‚ the man with a dot on his paper would then have his whole family take part in the process. After the whole family had chosen a slip the person with the dot would be stoned to death. The title is misleading considering the literal meaning of lottery is a
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The title‚ “The Lottery” is ironic for this story because during a lottery a person usually wins a prize. Wining a lottery is normally considered positive. When someone wins a lottery‚ that person is thrilled and extremely happy. Although in the story wining the lottery is not a positive thing because the person that wins the lottery would face a painful death. The only thing that the winner of the lottery would get is pain and grief‚ as the villagers would hit her with stones. The description in
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“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that asks the same question. The narrator presents a small-town where a traditional lottery is held annually every summer on June 27th. The town’s people get together for a lottery (1). The reward is unknown at the beginning to reader‚ but increasingly becomes more apparent as the story continues to its climax. The reward is a sadistic random tradition in the form of murder by stoning. The killing‚ which is the purpose of the lottery‚ is foreshadowed
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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
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some greater good? This is precisely the moral dilemma posed by author Shirley Jackson in her famous short story‚ “The Lottery.” In the story‚ a village is required to cull one of its members. In a yearly tradition‚ everyone gathers to select one person by way of random lottery‚ and then they stone them to death. As barbaric as the sacrifice is‚ everyone seems to go through the ritual with an air of resolved finality. “The Lottery” examines the idea of what is required of a person in society‚ what that
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