The Lottery

Your question hints that there are other objects in question, but only the black box is listed. I will attempt to name another symbolic object in addition to the black box. The black box is...

The title to this great short story is misleading because of the connotation that most readers are likely to have about the word "lottery." Generally speaking, people enter lotteries in order to...

I agree with other editors in identifying Jackson's main point in her excellent short story. She seems to be trying to make us wake up to how in our society we can all be complicit and involved in...

The setting is obviously in the American Midwest. The time is about the time the story was published in the New Yorker in 1948. The old saying quoted by Old Man Warner tells a lot about the...

This is a very good question. It made me realize that I had never fully understood the lottery process. It does consist of two rounds, and, as Lorraine Caplan explains, the first round it to select...

Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" has a title that is meant to be both realistic and ironic. It is realistic because there is, indeed, a tradition that is systematically followed in the...

Shirley Jackson's purpose in writing "The Lottery" has confused many readers. In 1948, when the story was first published, The New Yorker (where it was first printed) did not distinguish between...

Shirley Jackson's story is connotative of the ancient practice of finding a scapegoat for the evil plaguing a community. In this tradition, a goat was taken from the community, hopefully carrying...

The text of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" offers very few clues as to the setting of the story. It vaguely appears to be a village with similar characteristics to any American town....

The reason for Tessie's unhappiness at the first drawing of the lottery is simple: her family has drawn the slip of paper with the black spot. This means that this year, the annual sacrifice that...

I can only speculate, but if The Lottery were written from Tessie Hutchinson's viewpoint, it would have to be significantly reworked to set up the ending plot twist and preserve the story's sense...

Shirley Jackson does not tell the reader who is in charge of the town in her story "The Lottery." What the reader does know is that Mr. Summers is in charge of the lottery event and proceedings. It...

Since "situational irony" refers to any incongruity between what the audience reasonably expects and what actually happens, almost everything in "The Lottery" is ironic in this sense. The title...

Shirley Jackson issues a warning to be an independent thinker in her story “The Lottery.” Everyone goes along with the lottery merely because it is a tradition. No one ever thinks about what is...

One of the most elemental inferences that can be drawn from Old Man Warner's statements in "The Lottery" is that the town's tradition has gone on for some time without much in way of questioning....

Some believe Jackson was delving into the question of the Holocaust. She wanted to know how the people of Poland, Germany and other countries could know what was going on in the next town, or in...

Having written "The Lottery" in the wake of World War II (1948), Shirley Jackson may have intended to comment on both the role of the scapegoat and that of violence in societies. When Jackson's...

An interesting question—and one that deserves a thorough examination of more than the mathematical obvious. Old Man Warner has been participating in the lottery for 76 years prior to this drawing....

CORRECTION: Please note that "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is NOT historical non-fiction as described above. While the story taps into such ancient rituals as stoning and lotteries, it is in...

I would think that Tessie is almost riddled with conflicts, as the stones' markings would riddle her body. One present conflict is the fact that she is stoned by the villagers at the end of the...

No, I do not think that Mr. and Mrs. Adams want Tessie to die. I am sure that they are relieved that Tessie was chosen instead of one of them, but that doesn't mean that Mr. and Mrs. Adams are...

Depends on what you want to believe about humanity. If you want Mrs. D to act in the same cruel, unhumane, traditional method as everybody else, then she is picking up that large stone in order to...

This is a strong topic. While there is no mention of wealth and material privilege in Jackson's short story, I think that a clear case can be made that the focus on the narrative is the presence...

It is extremely significant that the townspeople lost the original lottery paraphernalia. In addition to the reasons stated in the previous post, the loss of the box is significant in that it...

The story was published in The New Yorker in 1948, and it would seem to be taking place at about that time in America. Old Man Warner expresses the superstition that if there is a lottery in June...

I think the reader begins to realize something is strange when the narrator explains that the men in the town keep away from the pile of stones the boys gather, and "they smiled rather than...

Irony occurs when a statement or situation is the opposite of what it seems. In this case, when Old Man Warner refers to people who have gotten rid of the lottery as a pack of crazy fools, he says...

The inciting incident in "The Lottery" occurs when the slips of paper are chosen and one person's family is singled out to provide the harvest sacrifice. ...the voices began to say, "It's...

A summary, as the one sentence requirement emphasizes, is a quick highlighting of the most important points of a story, with the less important details left out. A summary gets straight to the...

Some of the other towns in the vicinity are seriously thinking of discontinuing the tradition of holding lotteries. Apparently, the younger generation has moved away from the idea of human...

At most, the best lesson learned from "The Lottery" is that blind superstition--or even blind faith or blind belief--is just that: blind. There is a representation--not so much of human nature as...

The narrator explains to the reader that the old box used for the lottery has become really dilapidated and worn, with chipping paint and stains and faded areas. Mr. Summers, the man in town who...

Allegories contain a critical subtext, and Shirley Jackson's allegory in "The Lottery" has at least three distinct targets. A first idea is that in organized communities, such as the town that...

According to the short story "The Lottery," the date is June 27th. The people in the village are coming together for a lottery. They all know what will ensue. Right from the beginning the boys fill...

There are a few significant symbols in "The Lottery": The lottery- The lottery, held every June, is a ritual that the villages follow. It symbolizes what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of...

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is meant to demonstrate the negative impacts of blindly following "tradition" and avoiding societal change. In the story, the lottery is a traditional event that...

Warner is referred to in the story as "Old Man Warner," which indicates how he is viewed in the community. He seems to be the oldest person there, and when he first speaks, he responds angrily to...

Mrs. Hutchinson is upset (to varying degrees) at three different points in the story. Initially, she is upset—or perhaps, more accurately, just a bit embarrassed—that she is late to arrive at the...

In Shirley Jackson's celebrated short story "The Lottery," the nondescript town participates in a senseless, brutal ritual each June. A random innocent citizen is violently stoned by their family,...

I would say that the three main characters in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" are Old Man Warner, Tessie Hutchinson, and Mr. Summers. I'm not 100% clear on what you mean by "perspective." The...

I always connect "The Lottery" with Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." These stories are both based on the idea that if we sacrifice one person, everyone else can have a good...

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the selection defies friendships and family relationships, pitting friends against each other or mothers and fathers against their children, in which no...

Tradition rules over reason in this small New England village. Though the villagers, living in the twentieth century, have access to rational knowledge about farming, they cling to the outmoded and...

The women seem quite old-fashioned. One could imagine them all wearing ankle-length gingham dresses and sunbonnets. This is a patriarchal society, as we can see just from the way the lottery is...

In "The Lottery," Jackson uses foreshadowing in the second paragraph by drawing attention to the rocks which will be used in the stoning of Tessie Hutchinson. Bobby Martin stuffs his pockets with...

The folksy language and the events of small town life depicted in "The Lottery" give one an idea that this event is nothing out of the ordinary. The reader is calm until the end as the people...

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. The above is Tessie's final scream and the final line of the story. Tessie challenges the lottery as, in...

Having been written in the wake of World War II and the silent compliance of many with outrageous acts against humanity, Jackson's message does, indeed, seem to be a warning against the human herd...

The timeless and placeless setting of "The Lottery" is meant to make it a universal story, one that could happen at any time and in any place. The author intends for us to be able to see the story...

Some of her symbols contributed to an effective expression of her point regarding the consequence of blindly following blind tradition. One such symbol is the "faded house dresses and sweaters" the...