This story is given an ancient village set up in the 1940s. Villagers have just gathered to participate in a lottery event. First, the children arrive while chatting with each other; and even some are collecting stones. One Mr. Summers is in charge of the lottery and confirms that every household is represented at the lottery. Each member of the family is given a lottery paper to pick, and when everyone has made a pick, they are allowed to open them to discover who is selected is. However, when Bill Hutchinson is announced, his wife (Tess) starts to protest. This draws the reader's attention that indeed the lottery is not about the money. The lottery is repeated, and this time it is Tess who picks up the paper with a black dot, she protests further, but the villagers advance and stone her to death ( Kennedy & Gioia, D. (2009). Interestingly, the lottery was merely an ancient rite conducted by stoning one individual every year on June 27th.
On analyzing this story, the author's tone revolves around, irony, horror, domestic tranquility and sad. The setting itself is irony or somewhat hypocritical towards brutality and the evil aspects of the villagers as compared to civilization era. The author’s style here combines informal, formal, archaic and journalistic styles. This style is reflected in the irony and hypocrisy of villagers in the lottery. For instance, Tessie shouts “….You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!” ( Jackson, 1948). The irony is seen when Tessie hastily protests of the lottery not being fair only when it is her family that is endangered.
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Some words in this story appear powerful. For instance, words like the lottery, tradition, and ritual. The lottery is used to symbolize or signify some form of ritualized killings. In the same breath, tradition is used in the story to imply the inhuman actions that should be adopted at this modern age. All these words are used thematically and efficiently managed to capture the ironic style as intended. After conducting such an analysis, a reader can understand and appreciate author’s literature style word choice, sentence structure, and language, to establish mood, imagery, and meaning of any literature piece.
References
Gale, C. L. (2015). A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery.” Gale, Cengage Learning
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2009). Backpack Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing . Recording for Blind & Dyslexic.
Jackson, S. (1948). The lottery . Retrieved on 28 March 2018, from https://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf.
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