...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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...Financial advisor/lawyer 3. Money Issues Paragraph 2 1. Investments 2. Maintain income Paragraph 3 1. Family 2. Debts 3. Education 4. Conclusion We all at least thought about hitting the lottery and what we would do with all that money, but will it be the key to a promising future or a downward spiral of debt. Statistics have shown around 70 percent of lottery winners go broke after of couple years of winning. This is due to winners going berserk afterward with a lot of irrational spending and not enough planning. If I won the lottery the first thing I would do is hire a financial advisor and a lawyer. I think this is where a lot of winners make a crucial mistake by not sitting down with an advisor and make a long term and short term financial plan. My lawyer would be there to stop any scam artist, long lost relatives or convenient lawsuits that may arise. I may hire a personal accountant as well although I have trust issues with someone handling my money but it is something I’m willing to deal with to be financially successful. After I get all the initial safety precautions out of the way I would turn my attention to investing. I think investing your winnings wisely is a very big part of keeping a lottery winner from going broke. I would invest my money in mutual funds and bonds so that I got back a nice annual figure, that would then become my annual budget. With this tactic I’ll never spend more than I earned and essentially will...
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...State Lottery Billions of dollars are gained from lottery ticket sales each year (Thompson). Also half the money gained is used for state funding. Money schools need, but cannot receive, they can get from money gained in lottery ticket sales. Some states also have a program where cash gain from lottery ticket sales will help send kids to college. Over 850,000 students have been sent to college through this program and about $3 billion has been spent since the program began in the 1990s. The lottery supports schools and state programs. The program is good because it also helps kids pay for college because not everyone can pay for college. It's also good half the money spent on the lottery goes to helping the community. The lottery is worth it because you can win money, but if you do not you are still giving money to the state which helps with schools. Although you are playing the lottery, there is a big chance you will not win. “The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 175 million” (Worth). Also the money is not always used for schools. “Some of the money is spent on other city projects” (Worth). “People have a problem with grasping that the odds of winning are 1 in 175 million” (Wasserstein). The problem is that you...
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...Method Participants Young adults (10 woman, 10 men, Mage = 20 years, age range 18-22 years) were recruited by posting flyers in the student union of Carthage College campus. Older adults (10 woman, 10 men, Mage = 60 years, age range 58-62 years) were recruited by an add posted in a local newspaper. Test subjects for the study were randomly selected from volunteers whom had shown interest using the lottery method. Selection included assigning each volunteer (divided by groups of age and gender) a unique number. From there the numbers were placed in a hat and four trials of selection were used for five members of a certain age group and gender. Two control groups were made using equal amount of participants from each gender (same age group)....
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...sky. The sun shined over the podium that was dead center stage, which had its traditional red and blue décor all over it. In some towns, the lottery was stretched out over a few days to accommodate large populations but in the town of Freedomville, the small size of three hundred or so citizens meant that the event would only take a half day. The children were the first ones to arrive. They were playing with their stuffed elephants and toy donkeys, some even throwing them at each other. The girls were all dressed in red dresses with white strips while the boys...
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...“The Destructors” and “The Lottery” Fiction Essay Introduction Some may say that we are, as human beings, a violent people by nature. We see it in our own history of wars and genocide that the violence in us can grow to extreme proportions. These two stories, “The Destructors” by Graham Greene, and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, show us that some of the violence can be brought on by people simply following blindly. Whether we look at the past or the present, these two short stories, show us the mob mentality can be very dangerous. The long dead tradition of “The Lottery” tells of the town people forgetting most of the different parts of the tradition because it takes too long, or is not feasible. The one part they never forgot was the violent murder of one of their own people because of an old tradition that sacrifices a scapegoat each year. In “The Destructors”, a grand home still standing in a war-torn England would never have been torn down by a gang of teens if they weren’t following blindly, the one person leading the group, and succumbing to peer pressure. This shows that all it takes is a single person, or an old tradition that can convince a group to commit unnecessary violence. Greene’s book “The Destructors”, and Jacksons “The Lottery”, both show pointless acts of violence brought on by an individual that has people following them or a group of people following a long dead tradition. These acts of senseless violence could have been avoided if...
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...Community “The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies. It comes from friends and loved ones”- anonymous. The lottery made the community less united because nobody had compassion nor feelings towards each other. An example of friends going against each other in order to save themselves is when Mrs. Hutchinson claims Mr. Summers didn’t give Bill Hutchinson enough time to take the paper he wanted and her friends shouted, “Be a good sport, Tessie” and “All of us took the same chance” (Jackson 4). Friends are supposed to support each other, not want that person to die. The lottery makes the community less united because someone can be best friends with another person, but could get killed with stones by the same person the next day. Hence, nobody is friends with anybody. Another example of how detached the community is because of The lottery, is when Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone “so large she had to pick it up with both hands” and said, “Come on, hurry up” (5). These women were supposed to be Tessie’s friends yet one picked up a large stone and was eager to finish quickly. The message behind picking up the biggest stone is that there is no friendship or union when it comes to protecting their families. Everybody was happy Tessie was going to be killed and they, and their family members, were safe. The lottery made the community less united because when this event takes place, it discourages any feeling of empathy in the community, including family...
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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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...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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...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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...FICTION ESSAY WRITING STYLE USED: APA OUTLINE I. THESIS: A thorough analysis of Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” reveals that different literary elements, such as tone and setting, are used to convey the characters’ arrival at dark, sinister places. II. INTRODUCTION III. SHIRLEY JACKSON’S “THE LOTTERY” A. Setting the tone: Peaceful and relaxing B. Irony: Even though the mood is relaxing, there is a premonition of something bad to come C. Ending: The ending is implied IV. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S “YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN” D. Setting the tone: feeling of something evil to come E. Symbolism i. Faith – the wife and commitment to Jesus ii. Venture in to the forest – Journey of life iii. Traveler’s staff – Satan in the Garden of Eden F. Ending: Was it real or was it a dream? V. CONCLUSION A thorough analysis of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” reveals that different literary elements, such as tone and setting, are used to convey the characters’ arrival at dark, sinister places. Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” are two short stories that use completely opposite ways to get to the same destination: a dark, sinister place. Both stories are very dark, and almost morbid, but one story keeps the reader oblivious to the tragic event that is being set up, while the other story lays it...
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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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...Being turned on by people who you thought were your friends is a very tough feeling. In the short stories The Lottery, and The Possibility of Evil, Shirley Jackson writes about two female protagonists that get betrayed by their fellow townspeople. Shirley Jackson wrote about these events by using various literary terms such as imagery, irony, and tone. Shirley Jackson uses these literary terms in her story to make her readers understand how these two women felt after being turned on. In The Lottery and The possibility of evil both have different types of irony that occurs throughout these stories. In The Lottery Shirley Jackson used situational irony. When people hear the title The Lottery most people would assume that it would be a positive thing but in this story it is the exact opposite. In this lottery you are being picked to be stoned to death in hopes of a good season for your crops. In The possibility of evil Jackson used dramatic irony. The readers knew that Miss.Strangeworth was the one behind all of the anonymous letters, but known of the other characters were aware.For example when Miss.Strangeworth wrote “DIDN’T YOU EVER SEE AN IDIOT CHILD BEFORE? SOME PEOPLE SHOULDN’T HAVE...
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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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