Interpretive Essay On The Lottery

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Pages: 3

“The Lottery” Interpretive Essay “The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. It is about a small village of about three hundred people coming together in the village square and picking pieces of paper from a black box. One of the papers from the box has a black dot. The family that gets the black dot is the Hutchinsons. All of the members of the family gather around the black box and take a slip each. One of these slips also has a black dot. Tessie Hutchinson, Bill Hutchinson’s wife, gets the black dot. After they know that she is the one with the black dot, they all pick up stones and stone her to death. The question of the purpose of the lottery or why they do it is quite puzzling and is something to ponder immensely. There are a multitude of answers but only one has been selected. A possible …show more content…
43 lines 1-4) In this it shows that they did the lottery last year and it brought a good corn growing season and good weather as well. There are multiple variables that could play their own part in this though. It could have just been a nice day, they might not have had the lottery last year, and many others. But take a look at the next set of reasoning and evidence to dig even deeper. Another piece of evidence that could be used is, “Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes.” (Pg. 44 Ln. 32-34) This may possibly indicate that the lottery may be a ritual to change the seasons, weather, or other types of thing of the sorts. If so, the men may be discussing the matters of planting seasons, tractors, and others and how they might be affected by the