...The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is filled with symbolism. In fact, the story is a symbol within itself. Even though the story lacks setting it can still be understood through the symbolism it contains. I have found various symbols throughout this story. The symbols I have found are: the black box, the dotted cards, and the lottery. The first symbol I found was the black box. This symbolizes various things. For example, it symbolizes the deterioting of the population and the customs that a city/town was built upon. The box is worn & torn and not original. The population is slowly dying because of the ritual that they believe has been practice for years. The ritual that they practice may not be original and may be, like the box, only a form of or bits and pieces of the original practice and believe behind this ritual. It also may symbolize that a new custom is needed. In the story, they said that Mr. Summers had been requesting a new box for years. This suggests that the new box symbolizes a new custom that is surely needed. Another symbol is the dotted cards. These cards symbolize death. They symbolize death because if you obtain a dotted card you will be stoned to death. They also symbolize a control system. These cards are used to control the population and control a person and/or their family. The town was so compliant with the custom that no one realized it was wrong, and if they did they didn’t speak up. One reason they didn’t speak up was because of fear...
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...THE LOTTERY When people talk about lottery, the first things in mind are luck and fortune. Every day, there’s a new winner somewhere on Earth, whose life has been changed forever, and everyone else is fantasizing about the perks of being a lottery winner. But sometimes, the common notion of a lottery winner is completely different from reality. A perfect example, is the story “the Lottery”, where an innocent, yet unlucky woman wins the lottery and the prize of getting stoned to death. Even though this sounds dramatic and brutal in our ears, it is not far from what is happening right now, in other countries in the world. But we don’t see it as a tradition, as they do in the story. The stoning of the “winner” is an annual tradition for the villagers; “Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done.” What is noticeable about this tradition was, that many of the villagers don’t seem to really understand why this is even a tradition. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” The fact that the villagers had forgotten the original ritual indicates that it doesn’t really mean a lot to them. They are doing it more for habit than desire. The stoning of Tessie Hutchinson does not involve any form of prosecution or criminal acts whatsoever, and is completely based on bad luck. The rest of the...
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...Young Goodman Brown and The Lottery The comparison and contrasts between The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (1948) and Young Goodman Brown, by Hawthorne (1835) in this essay takes on the topic of “blindly following traditions”(Jackson, 1948) and “the weakness of the public morality” (Hawthorne, 1835). While the entire society members are under the authority of Old Man Warner are employed in The Lottery, The character of Goodman Brown is employed to depict the theme. Young Goodman Brown, by Hawthorne (1835), “The Weakness of Public Morality” In this story, the author emphasizes how corruption is the result of the insistence on the Puritan society and is the cause of moral decline and the diminishment of personal faith. Goodman makes the decision to go to the forest to meet the devil however, he takes cover when he realizes that the minister and the Deacon Gookin because he was concerned with appearance even though they are also out there. Brown’s religious beliefs are strongly connected with the belief that all of his peers believe the same as he does. When Goodman recognizes that his peers including his father and grandfather shaped his religious beliefs made a deal with the devil, he...
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...March 2015 Point of View Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" uses the third-person limited point of view to tell a story about a village that celebrates an egregious, annual event. The narrator in the story shows many small details of the lottery taking place, but leaves the most important and thrilling detail until the end: the winner of the lottery wins the prize of being stoned to death by other villagers. The usage of third-person point of view, while adding a few bits of omniscient, is a convincing way of explaining this ironic narrative. The narrator uses third-person point of view by explaining information and actions to the reader to try and keep the reader off-balance of figuring out the conclusion. "The Lottery" is predominantly told in the third-person limited point of view, but infrequently, the narrator becomes omniscient to uncover information to the reader, but in the story, the villagers know the event that is occurring. The minimal use of omniscient does not diminish from the narrative, and also effectually shows the reader of small details that do not repeat. Omniscient is an effective way of holding in the surprise till the very end. The use of third-person point of view allows the narrator to use small specifics, for instance, the appearance and origination of the lottery box allows the narrator to show the reader meaningful hints without spoiling the ending. Stones are the weapons to kill the winner of the lottery, but the Smith 2 information is explained plainly...
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...The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on...
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...The short story, “The Lottery”, was written by Shirley Jackson in 1948. Shirley Jackson wrote it while she was living on Prospect Street in North Bennington, Vermont. It took her less than two hours to write this story. “The Lottery” is a story about a sacrifice that’s made on the same day every year where a lottery determines which family, and which individual of the family, gets stoned to death. There are many different pieces of symbolism in this story. One of the items in this story that uses symbolism, and probably the most important, is the black box. It represents the tradition of the lottery and the illogic of the villagers’ loyalty to it. “The black box grew shabbier each year” (2), and it was “splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained” (2), showing it’s age, meaning that the lottery has been going on for a long, long time. They are unwilling to replace it. They plan on replacing it each year, but they never do. They are attached to it because a story claims that the box is made of pieces of...
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...“The Lottery” and “The Mending Wall” have themes that almost mirror each other exactly. One shows a small town and its tradition of a cruel, random murder each and every June, that has been repeated for hundreds of years. The other shows two neighbors repairing a wall, the narrator thinks that repairing the wall is unnecessary and that the wall should not exist only to exist and serve no purpose, but his neighbor claims that the wall is key to maintaining their relationship. Both Shirley Jackson and Robert Frost play with the idea of blindly following tradition and how it can be harmful. This short story and poem are similar because in both, there are people who refuse to question tradition; while they differ because the consequences of ignorance are much greater in “The Lottery”. “He only says, “Good Fences make good neighbours.” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head: “Why do they make good neighbours?”” The message Robert Frost tries to convey in this poem, is that breaking free of tradition if one feels the need to do so, is not wrong. He’s trying to tell the reader to be the one who questions things rather than just blindly following someone else’s beliefs or customs. In the short...
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...In the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin, the authors consider their society as a utopia and believe sacrifice is the only way for it to remain a utopian society. The similarities and differences of the sacrifice of the two short stories consists of the type of society, the types of government, and how relates to the modern society. In “The Lottery,” their believes that without sacrifice is the only way to obtain livelihood. It is the only way to have food and to prevent a community wide famine. They choose to do a “lottery” because it randomly chooses a person out of the entire community to sacrifice their lives at a random pick which is much like modern day society and how people are chosen at random ny the card/number they get to win a certain amount of money. “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in june, corn be heavy soon’” (Jackson 4). In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” they also believe that sacrifice is essential to life. In their society happiness,...
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...“Sacrifice” it is to offer or give up something for the benefit of something else. Sacrifice is the theme of the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by author Ursula K. Leguin. The setting of both the stories is overall the same. The stories in the beginning are picturesque. “The Lottery” sets place in a quaint peaceful town and is clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.” The Lottery is held every year and the readers assume that the gathering of the people in the town square is a positive significance for winning the lottery but the author briefly mentions about what the future holds, before the story unfolds. For instance the children picking up stones and “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the...
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...Fiction Essay In D.H Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson the theme of death and gambling, not for money, but for life in “The Lottery”. Death appears towards the end of the stories in “The Lottery” Tessie wins the lottery and is stoned, meanwhile Paul in “The Rocking-Horse Winner” dies trying to gain the affection of his mother. In “The Rocking-Horse Winner” Paul rides his treasured rocking horse to determine the outcome of the horse races to win money to try to gain the affection of his mother who seems to only care about material things, especially money. When Oscar asks Paul about the name of his horse Paul is unable to come up with a name, he used the names of the champion horses as the name of his treasured toy. Paul hears whispers from inside the house “There must be more money” as his uncaring mother spent more and more, which drove him to ride his horse more and more until he became physically exhausted from riding and ultimately died. Paul’s only goal in the story was to get the love of his mother who only cared for money and material things. Hester, Paul’s mother was unable to love her children which we learned from the story in the opening sentences when D.H Lawrence writes “She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them” (100). While Paul would gamble on horses to gather money for his neglectful mother During “The Lottery” we also see death as a theme. Shirley...
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...Fiction Essay Tawanda Robertson Liberty University ` Thesis Statement: The fictional stories both deal with the behavior of people toward other individuals. Both stories having different writing styles and different settings but the outcome is the same. As "The Lottery" deal with winnings by stoning people, but when the winner are chosen it is a different ball game. I. The Lottery Fictional story setting is normal people from a small village. A. The Lottery story takes place on the sunny summer day on June 27th. B. The place represents normal business places such as post office, schools, and a bank. C. The story takes places around ten o’clock in the morning. II. The main characters are the 300 people of the village. A. Mr. Summers is a jovial man that conducted the lottery. B. Tessie Hutchinson, who was stoned. C. Old man Warner, who was the oldest person in the village, III. The people from the village seem happy to be gathering around for the lottery that takes up to two hours since it was only about 300 people in town. IV. The most dangerous game story settings take place late at night in a yacht on an island, known as Ship-Trap Island. A. General Zaroff’s home. B. Jungle V. The main characters are the General Zaroff’s and Sanger Rainsford. A. Whitney B. Ivan VI. Sanger Rainsford thought hunting animals was all fun and games until he become the victim, and he had to fight for survival...
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...Comparative Fiction Essay ENGL 102: Literature and Composition Spring 2014 B64 Kamia Washington L24871035 MLA Kamia Washington Professor Virginia Dow English 102 B64 3 February 2, 2014 Comparative Fiction Essay In many ways the most influential element of a work of literature can prove to be the characters that the author creates. In the instance of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner” the characters are built and the story is wrapped around the individual characterizations. In both Jackson’s and Lawrence’s short stories the reader is allowed to assume any of the possible details to fill in the missing parts of the story. It is not until the end that the reader understands that the characters were giving away the ending the throughout the story. Along with the relationships established, the dialogue and simply executed actions of the main characters the story begins to unfold. The family and friends that are closest to the main character tends to make the story. In both cases of “The Lottery” and “ The Rocking Horse Winner” the extras of the short stories help to reveal the main characters real attitude, honest behavior, and their transparent emotions. In “The Lottery” it is evident that the characters closest to the main character can easily fall in line with the rest of society; in “The Rocking Horse Winner” family and friends can do all they can to help and still not be enough. In “The Lottery”, Jackson begins...
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...Fiction Essay APA Thesis Statement The themes of the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Rocking- Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence are similar in the way that they both use a game of chance or gambling in the presentation. Both of these stories are based on luck but instead of happiness being the ultimate prize for winning, death is the tragic outcome. Outline Introduction/Thesis paragraph I. Underlying message from the stories about the problems not directly addressed a. Lottery i. Conforming to traditions even when they are wrong or outdated b. Rocking Horse Winner i. Love or worship of materialistic things instead of each other II. Objects used by the author for symbolism a. Lottery i. Black box even though all other items have been forgotten b. Rocking Horse Winner i. Wooden rocking horse to symbolize the horses in the race III. Authors use of the gamble a. Lottery i. Being drawn means the prize is getting stoned to death b. Rocking Horse Winner i. Although the prediction of the race winner is correct Paul ends up dead and still without his mother’s love IV. Conclusion a. Restate and reword thesis and close. Playing the lottery or betting on horse races is a game of chance where the ultimate prize is money and fortune. The themes of the short stories, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Rocking- Horse...
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...In “A Representative and a Scapegoat: Analysis of Tessie Hutchinson in ‘The Lottery’, Fuyu Chen portrays Tessie Hutchinson as a scapegoat. Chen begins by giving the definition of a representative as one who is chosen to represent another or others. It is clear to see that Mrs. Hutchinson fits this definition for the reason that she was the one chosen to represent the lottery. Chen goes on to reason that Tessie’s appearance differs from the other villagers, and this backs up the idea that Tessie is a scapegoat. While all the other villagers have already assembled, Tessie is the only person to be late for the lottery ceremony. This shows that she regards the lottery as something trivial rather than something of importance. Chen regards Tessie’s...
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...After reading several of required readings, I decided that my interest more into the reading about “The Lottery”. At first when I saw the title, I thought this would be great for me because everyone should know about lottery but after reading the text I gain a better understand of the writer was trying to present. Earlier in the passage it talked about the people gathering around in the town for an event and the children deciding to gather rocks and make a pile. I thought this could be fun and something very interesting about kids. When I began, it gave me a sense of how we acted as kids in trying to create games to play with what we could find outside to play with. The stanza in my opinion that made this short story complete was when...
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