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The Lottery
“The Lottery” is an allegory of the dangers of tradition. An allegory is a story that symbolically represents something else. In “The Lottery,” things are done the way they have always been...
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The Lottery
The climax of the story is the drawing of the slips of paper and the "winner" Tessie was discovered. The falling action occured as the town gathered around Tessie to give her her "winnings" of...
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The Lottery
One could come up with a multitude of reasons as to why Jackson wrote the short story "The Lottery." Given that her stories typically provided a foil to her life, Jackson seemed to be flirting with...
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The Lottery
There are several major themes in "The Lottery." One involves violence. One of the reasons that Jackson wrote the story was to draw attention to the inhumanity of violence. Jackson...
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The Lottery
While your explanation defines a limit to three to five sentences, a little background is necessary. In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the town's people are getting ready for their annual...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" contains both situational and dramatic irony. Situational irony occurs when events in a story play out in a way that is the opposite of what one would expect. Dramatic irony occurs...
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The Lottery
Tessie Hutchinson is the main character of Shirley Jackson's celebrated short story "The Lottery" and becomes the town's scapegoat after she chooses the slip of paper with the black spot on it....
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The Lottery
When the story opens, Mr. Summers, the official of the lottery, begins the public preparations. The story’s narrator offers reminiscences and speculations that the villagers often discuss about...
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The Lottery
The point of view in "The Lottery" is third person. The extremely objective narrator does not delve into the minds of any of the characters or give insight into their feelings; rather he merely...
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The Lottery
The lottery itself symbolizes tradition. In this case, the townspeople continue having a lottery because that is what they have always done to ensure their continued way of life, though the direct...
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The Lottery
To me, this story tells us that human beings are by nature followers. We stick with tradition and with what we are told. We will sometimes do this even if it leads us to do horrible things. In...
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The Lottery
The central conflict in “The Lottery” is the external conflict of person vs. society, because it is the traditions of the village that cause Tessie Hutchinson to be killed, and one other person...
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The Lottery
In Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery," the nondescript town holds the lottery every June, and the entire community is required to participate in the annual ritual. During the lottery,...
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The Lottery
Shirley Jackson, who was born in 1916, grew up in an early- and mid-twentieth-century United States far more dominated by small town life than is the case today. After she married, she and her...
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The Lottery
Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," contains many different examples of figurative language. Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison between a person, place, thing, or idea to other person,...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" has several themes throughout its short story dealing with violence, cruelty of human nature, victim and victimization, and even classic gender roles. However, I've always felt that...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a story which contains many examples of irony. The first, of course, is that the title and opening paragraphs all indicate that the lottery is something positive...
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The Lottery
Upon first glance, there doesn't seem to be much purpose for the lottery. The people in the story seem to remember there was once a reason for the lottery, but the system has been going on for so...
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The Lottery
In paragraph five, we learn that the "original paraphernalia" of the lottery was lost a long time ago. The black box now in use was built even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village,...
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The Lottery
The evidence of Jackson's use of Gothic conventions in "The Lottery" is seen in the following genre-specific traits: Duality - The villagers' "do or die" attitudes regarding the ancient stoning...
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The Lottery
In Shirley Jackson's celebrated short story "The Lottery," the central external conflict is considered an individual versus society conflict. In Jackson's nondescript rural town, the community...
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The Lottery
I do believe that the fear of change is a part of the continuation of the lottery practice. A part of this is the natural resistance people have to change. It is inconceivable for the villagers...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" uses situational irony, which is when a situation or events turns out differently from what is expected. Jackson uses irony in this story to increase the shock value of the ending....
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" starts out with an objective tone that makes the reader feel comfortable. The narrator recounts the beautiful first days of summer, the kids playing, and the town folk heading to the...
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The Lottery
The first two paragraphs of "The Lottery" describes the setting: a small village on a bright sunny day. School had just been let out for the summer, and the kids are playing, gathering rocks and...
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The Lottery
One characteristic the villagers seem to value, in addition to respect for tradition, is conformity. Each person who comes to participate in the drawings and the stoning seems to be doing so...
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The Lottery
The first stage of the lottery is the preparation of the wooden box and the slips of paper that go in it. It used to be chips of wood, but the population of the town grew to be too much for that....
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The Lottery
Throughout the story, the author often refers to "this village" or "the villagers," and the village can certainly be spoken of as a character in its own right. Indeed, the village is presented as...
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The Lottery
When Mr. Summers gets ready to start the first drawing he asks: Anybody ain't here?" "Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar." Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said....
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" shows readers a shocking town tradition, and most readers are likely to focus on how the story points out issues with following tradition for the sake of tradition; however, a closer...
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The Lottery
All of these literary techniques work to convey an image of a folksy, quaint, and disturbingly narrow backdrop for the action of the story. Characters in "The Lottery" are all townspeople in the...
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The Lottery
Shirley Jackson's underlying message of her celebrated short story "The Lottery" concerns the dangers of blindly following traditions. Jackson portrays the lottery as a senseless, violent ritual...
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The Lottery
The setting of Shirley Jackson's celebrated short story takes place in a nondescript rural village on a beautiful summer day in late June. The day of the lottery is clear and sunny as the villagers...
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The Lottery
In terms of what time of year it is, we learn immediately that it is summertime, "June 27th" to be exact. It is a beautiful sunny day, and the flowers are in full bloom amidst the rich, green grass...
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The Lottery
Verbal irony is irony that is either spoken by characters or contained within the words of a story. Often, a writer will describe one thing but the reader gets a very different idea when reading...
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The Lottery
Mr. Warner is the oldest man in town, and the black box has been around even longer than he has (at least from "pieces of the box that had preceded it"). Thus, he comes to represent tradition and...
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The Lottery
In "The Lottery," Tessie's final scream is both horrifying and ironic. After receiving the "winning" drawing that marks her as this year's sacrificial victim, she cries out that what is about to...
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The Lottery
One of the main themes in "The Lottery" is the cult of tradition. People do things out of habit on a daily and even yearly basis. Habits become rituals which can become traditions. When social...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" makes the point that tradition alone is not a sufficient justification for an action. The story shows how uneasy the village residents are with their annual June lottery. For example,...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" is told in the past tense, from a third-person omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator is not a participant in the story's action and does not use the first-person...
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The Lottery
The first thing to do when faced with a question such as this, focusing on definitions and word origins, is to review the various definitions of the root word and decide which are relevant. I have...
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The Lottery
The setting of "The Lottery" is important in the story based upon the contrast it sets in regards to what the day is to bring. The setting (time and place) of the story takes place on a sunny...
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The Lottery
Several of the characters in "The Lottery" have particularly apposite names. Old Man Warner takes on a monitory role—warning against the foolishness of giving up the lottery, as other villages...
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The Lottery
In the story we learn that The lottery was conducted—as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program—by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic...
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The Lottery
Old Man Warner, who is participating in the lottery for the seventy-seventh time, is a staunch believer in the annual ceremony of the lottery. His presence in the chilling narrative of "The...
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The Lottery
One moral in this story has to do with the nature of violence. Violence can occur anytime, and there is no rhyme or reason to it. The most mild-mannered person can be capable of vicious acts. This...
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The Lottery
The two stories are alike in that a woman dies—a victim of the society into which she is born. However, in the case of "The Lottery" Tessie Hutchinson's gender is not the reason she is victimized...
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The Lottery
"The Lottery" is set in a small farming village, somewhere reasonably isolated from other villages. The people living there focus on their yearly harvest to see them through the winter, and ever...
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The Lottery
This detail is significant because Davy's mother, Tessie Hutchinson, has been selected as the winner of the lottery after her husband draws the slip of paper with the black spot. This means that...
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The Lottery
In the short story, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, several different attitudes towards the ritual appear with different characters in the story. Both Mr. and Mrs. Adams express doubt about the...
