Analysis Of The Book The Lottery Essay - 1370 Words

The Lottery is a fictional account of a group of villagers who conduct a yearly ceremony to determine at random who among their community will be ritually sacrificed. The villagers have come to believe annual participation in this ceremony will result in good fortune. Specifically, it is believed the success of the corn harvest and continued provision of sustenance in the community can only be assured through human sacrifice. Though only a fiction, The Lottery conveys to the reader a message, albeit rather abstractly, about the real world around us. This message is the story s central theme. By examining thematic elements of the story and concluding as to precisely what the main theme of the story is, the reader can derive an understanding as to the purpose and nature of the story, but perhaps even better yet can shine a light and narrowly glean a slight esoteric understanding of the author s state of mind and personal experiences. In the case of the lottery, that theme is as follows : times and technologies change, but people never will. The Lottery opens with a scene like that out of a Disney movie: the sky is blue, it s a warm sunny day, and the green pastures of the village have come to life. It is revealed that a lottery process would be commencing later in the morning on that late June day (June 27th) in the small village in which the story was set, and highlighted that surrounding towns engaged in the same process as evidenced by this segment of the text:Show MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery 1123 Words   |  5 Pagesquestion why. Suzanne Collin’s novel The Hunger Games and Shirley Jackson’s short story â€Å"The Lottery† best illustrate this point by showing how a violent annual tradition affects a society and its innocent people. The Hunger Games has such uncanny similarities to â€Å"The Lottery† that it almost seems as if Collins used Jackson’s story as a source of inspiration for her novel. Both The Hunger Games and â€Å"The Lottery† are extremely sim ilar thematically in the sense that sheepishly following tradition can oftenRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery 916 Words   |  4 Pages The Foreshadowing in â€Å"The Lottery† On a warm day in late June, villagers gather in the square to participate in a lottery run by Mr. Summers. The children arrive first and begin collecting stones until their parents call them to order. Mr. Summers calls each head of the household forward to a black wooden box, where each selects a slip of paper. Once the men have chosen, Mr. Summers allows everyone to open the paper and see who wins. Bill Hutchinson wins and his wife immediately starts protestingRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery 961 Words   |  4 Pagesname. Why has Jackson left out these seemingly significant details? The time and place in The Lottery are purposely dubious as a result of the focuses Jackson wished to make. Anyplace, at whatever time, individuals can be convinced to be supporters, to indiscriminately hold fast to custom, and to make substitutes. Notice that in the story, is the setting ambiguous, as well as the purpose behind the lottery is misty. Individuals in the town don t know why they are doing what they are doing, thus theyRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery Essay1893 Words   |  8 Pages When I think of the lottery, I think of a game basically where they choose one number and something or something gets chosen. * Setting can best be defined as: B. Thy physical location, time, and social environment in which a story takes place. In the first paragraph, the setting is described as a beautiful sunny day that is during the summer. Everything is in bloom and the grass is green. Basically, during this first paragraph, the author describes it as a â€Å"perfect† day which shows how niceRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery Jackson 919 Words   |  4 Pagesuses specific details to draw attention in certain points of the story. In the beginning of The Lottery Jackson provides us with specific details about the day on which the lottery takes place. She tells us the date â€Å"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day† (Jackson 242), the time, â€Å"around ten o clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days.† (Jackson 242) and the temperature, warm. Jackson applies the same attentionRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Lottery By Edgar Allan Poe970 Words   |  4 Pagesnot want their children to be reading. Sh irley just wrote books that explained life, she made people see the truth in others. She wanted to see the capacity that humans had for evil. Her stories were mainly about the reality of life and its horrific truths. Throughout her times she had received numerous awards, Edgar Allan Poe Award had been just one out of many. During this time she had also received criticism about her writing. The Lottery, The Haunting of the Hill House, and We Have Always livedRead More Shirley Jacksons The Lottery 946 Words   |  4 PagesJackson wrote many short stories and even some books. They are more on the dark, witchlike side, however. Kelleher explains that Jackson stated in some interviews that she practiced magic. No one really knows if she was serious while practicing witchcraft or not, but it ended up helping her write her stories http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/shirley_jackson_bennington.aspx). A major story that throws people for a loop is â€Å"The Lottery†. Th is was Jackson’s first short story and manyRead MoreState Lotteries1076 Words   |  5 PagesState Lotteries: Take a Second Look From the time the Europeans first landed on the Atlantic shore, lotteries have been a part of the American society. According to Will Spink, most states are currently operating a state lottery despite its bleak history in the U.S. (Spink 1). Since 1983, North Carolina has introduced lottery bills in the legislature every year (NC Christian 15). North Carolina Governor, Mike Easley, favors a lottery for increasing revenues for education (Analysis 2). HoweverRead MoreSymbolism in The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson Essay example1173 Words   |  5 PagesWhen most people play the lottery today, they think about having wealth. Generally, people who win are happy about it whether they win one dollar or a million. The lottery in our society has grown to support education and it is often worth several million dollars. Usually, the winner of the lottery gains a lot of recognition for the money they win. But what would happen if there was a small town where people held a yearly lottery in which the â€Å"winner† was the member of the town who was not sacrificedRead MoreAn Unkindness of Tradition: Shirley Jackson ´s Biography1624 Words   |  7 Pagespurely based on her life as a mother and wife. Before these were published, Jackson and her family found that she had periodic depression issues. This has been largely known to be the reasoning for her controversial writing of things such as â€Å"The Lottery†, which was published in The New Yorker in 1948. During this time Jackson jokingly described herself as a practicing witch (Grade Saver, 1999). This housewife-turned-witch persona caught a lot of attention and gave her a suitable career path to