...The Lottery: Tradition and Cruelty Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" features a supposedly civilized village with barbaric traditions. At the beginning of the story, the townsfolk appear to be fairly civilized and seem to carry on modern lifestyles. This is assumed by the men at work and the children playing as if it were just an average day. The lottery was outdated to such a degree that some seen it as a cruel tradition no one could escape. On the other hand, some had believed that carrying on the tradition was necessary. Not long after "The Lottery" was published in The New Yorker, "a flood of mail - hundreds of letters-deluged both the editorial offices in New York and the post office in Bennington" (Friedman 63). Shirley Jackson said that out of all the letters sent, there were only thirteen that were positive responses, and those were from her friends (63). The letters consisted of "bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse" (63). The public's initial reaction to the story was extremely negative. The fact that the tradition itself is scheduled for 10:00 and it took only two hours shows that there is no concern for the "winner" of the lottery, only for themselves. The villagers had a convenient amount of time so they were able to eat their lunch afterwards and continue their day. The children collected stones, competing against the other children, and tried to keep other friends from stealing rocks from their piles. This most definitely shows that the tradition...
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...waiting for the front doors of our favorite stores to open, to be nearly trampled upon for discounted items, is a tradition we, as Americans, like to call Black Friday. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, often regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. To get people in the spirit, most major retailers open before the sun comes up and offers promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season. Americans consider “getting in the spirit,” by waking at the crack of dawn to pry items out of other people’s hands while at the same time getting pushed and shoved by crazy amounts of people on the same hunt. We call a tradition; a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance that has origin from the past. Black Friday is the one tradition that I thought was the worst until 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 in which one person in the town is randomly chosen, by a drawing, to be violently stoned by friends...
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...to another. Cultural traditions are expressions of a certain group’s views, they are techniques of preserving one’s identity and they help people in that group mark significant occurrences or life transitions. These traditions usually display response and care based on gender, age, life stage, and social class. While many traditions promote unity, happiness and fellowship, others weaken the trait of social cohesion and the psychological health and integrity of certain individuals. Just because tradition have been present for a while, it does not mean it is always right. Some traditions...
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...“The Lottery” and its Outdated Traditions The story, “The Lottery” has many themes to it, all dealing with the corrupted practices of society. The story was written by Shirley Jackson in the year 1948. During this time, there was a lot of corruption and practices that were unjust. The themes that occur in this story are; people not rejecting outdated traditions and ideas, the evil ways of ordinary people, sacrifices for community sins and conformity. Jackson brings these practices to light and exposes them for what they really are. “The Lottery” is about a small town in which a lottery is held on every June 27th. It is a tradition that has been taking place for a many decades. The lottery is not the type of lottery held today, however, it is a lottery to ultimately sacrifice someone’s life. Shirley Jackson wrote this story to shock her audience. She wanted to show a tradition that is highly corrupted taking place in a small and what seems to be, a normal town. The word, “tradition” means inherited or established customs or actions, In the story, some townsmen are talking about other towns getting rid of their lottery. The Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools.”(Jackson) He is referring to the other villages that have abolished this tradition. He also states that it is the seventy-seventh time he has attended the lottery, as if to say it has been around for a long time and will continue to be around. The people of this village are committing...
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...Tradition can be a wonderful thing, it can bring entire social groups together with the potential of bettering their society. Tradition however can be a terrible thing at the same time, taking primitive thoughts and ideas, and turning them into harmful actions. When does tradition go too far? Is it when the people are killing off their loved ones based on the ideas of a leader whose only true power is arbitrary? Shirley Jackson showcases the danger of blindly following tradition through her book The Lottery, showing that danger is never perceived by those who follow it unconditionally. The Lottery at the beginning of the story appears as if nothing is wrong, children play, wives are gossiping and men are playfully joking on an average day...
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...How does your tradition define you? In the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.On a sunny day in a village each year young boys would pile rocks ,and families would gather together.”The Lottery” was a yearly tradition the people in the village had to sacrifice a member of their family.The two characters that stood out to me was tessie hutchinson and Mrs.Delacroix. The main character in the story is Tessie Hutchinson.The day of “The Lottery” She arrived to the gathering forgetting what day it was.She has been so use to the tradition, as soon as she notice nobody was in her sight she ran over to the gathering. Trying to make it through the crowd ,she met with Mrs.Delacroix giggling at one another.As Tessie got closer up she stood beside her family.Everyone got really nervous once Mr.summers started to call names and soon enough he called tessie's husband.Mr hutchinson had the black dot and in that moment tessie changed. Mrs.Delacriox is a friend of tessie, they would laugh and gossip together.As Mrs.hutchinson got to the front Mrs.Delacroix was cheering her on.To take a chance like everybody else is.Being part of the lottery means that there going to have a good harvest and who ever...
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...“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (132). Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a tale that showcases a strange yearly tradition within a small town where neither the children nor the elderly are exempt from participating. Throughout the story, Jackson lures readers into a false sense of serenity with her title where she then proceeds to illustrate a peculiar and perhaps merciless gathering of the townspeople participating in their annual lottery event. The most brutal and barbaric part of the short story written by Jackson is the manner of death that is used on the “winner” of the lottery. While no specific time period is given, one can still see from...
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...The short story “The Lottery” represents the annual tradition of the community to stone or purge one of their people. They choose one of the people living in the village by letting them draw the paper out of the black box and whoever gets the paper with some marks on it will be the chosen one. Some people in this town seems to dislike this annual tradition and wanting it to stop and some people just doesn’t care at all. However, there is no one speaking up for this to happen. This annual tradition will have the chance to stop if there are people who can speak up and stop it. The story shows that people are blind and mute, not literally, because they see what is really going on but they just remain silent about it. Even though they heard that...
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...“The Lottery” is a short story that would have most people thinking and feeling good at the beginning. At the end, however, they learn the ironic truth that the reward is death. In the small village, the villagers repeat this horrific tradition of picking a person at random and stoning them to death without question. Jackson shows us how easily and willingly we will follow a tradition for no other reason than that’s just how things are. In her short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson shows us the blind following of tradition and the slow deterioration of the tradition through the use of symbols such as the black box, the Lottery, and Old Man Warner. The black box represents how the villagers really feel about the tradition. Every year they...
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...Visualize winning the lottery. Maybe it is a tradition that is done in some sort of way in your family or town. In the short story “The Lottery” the tradition in this small town is not quite as it seems. The two characters I’m about to specify personifies the tradition of this lottery. The first character in this short story that personifies the tradition is a man named Old Man Warner. Old Man Warner is a 77 year old man that has been in the lottery 77 times. When I glance at the name “Warner”, it emulates the word “warning” that tends to grab my attention as a reader. Besides that, in this short story the old man calls the people a pack of crazy/young fools. The reason behind calling them crazy/young fools is because he is a mundane person...
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...How far would you go to keep tradition going? In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson tradition plays a major role. The characters in this ironic story take keeping tradition to another level. Old Man Warner who is the “oldest man in town” says that there is an old saying that states, “lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” The lottery is an event that occurs place every year. Basically everyone in their village assembles and someone's life is sacrificed for their harvest. Each family has one person to draw for their family. If a person draws the white paper that has a black dot on it, then everyone in their family has to draw. Finally, the family member that draws the paper with the dot gets stoned. Ultimately this short story is full of characters such as, Mrs. Delacroix and Tessi Hutchinson, who are good and evil natured....
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...Following traditions are not always good and can become dangerous and blindly. Many do not know any better because traditions go on for many years. In the gothic short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson creates a town like no other. The literary devices utilized in “The Lottery” helped to manifest and develop the story are setting, characterization, symbolism and irony. “The Lottery” opens up with a calm setting of a sunny summer June 27th. From the outside, the town seems normal and quiet. Then the town starts to have a creepy, secret feeling, as if everyone has something to hide. The setting of “The Lottery” helps the reader understand the mood of the town and helps you understand the truth behind the tradition. Each character is different, but they all have one thing in common, they all follow tradition. The lottery is run by Mr. Summers. Mr.Summers is the leader of the town who is friendly to everyone and everyone respects him....
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...In the fiction story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, she write about a town they is preparing for the lottery. In the story the whole town about three hundred people was waiting outside in the square, between the post office and the bank, at ten o'clock. In the story the whole town is waiting for the lottery to be done and every man of the house hold have to get up and het a folded piece of paper from a black box and see if they had won. In the story I thought that Mr. Hutchinson wife, Mrs. Hutchinson would be glad that her family won the lottery however she was not. In paragraph 45 she said "…You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair..." she was complaining that her husband won and I was confuse...
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...As members of society and a popular culture, we do much without even discerning why or how these certain practices came about. Many actions in our daily lives are results of these so-called traditions. Anything from red beans on Monday to mass on Sunday can be described as a tradition rooted in the past. But at what point is it required to dispose of long-held traditions that have been followed for decades or even centuries? Just because in the past something was considered acceptable—such as slavery—does not mean that it should be accepted as right. This question is just the problem Tessie Hutchinson, the protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” reveals when she is chosen to be stoned to death. The lottery, a long tradition in the town...
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...Despite the unethicality of the lottery, the villagers’ unconscious fear of life without one prompts them to uphold the tradition of a yearly lottery. As the villagers began to stone her, Tessie Hutchinson screamed, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.” In addition to expressing her belief in a flawed lottery, Mrs. Hutchinson also reveals an opinion suppressed but unconsciously acknowledged by the other villagers: the immorality of the lottery. The unconscious desire to terminate the lottery is evident in a girl’s desire that one of Tessie’s children remain safe, nervousness and apprehension throughout the selection process, and the success of nearby villages in terminating it. However, the fear of life without a lottery, voiced by Old Man Warner...
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