The Lottery Setting Analysis

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Would you continue to participate in an annual event that could cost the life of a loved one or your own even if it possibly meant a better life for you and your family? When you think of a lottery is it generally in a positive aspect of winning a prize? Was that the case here? Did those who did not have their name drawn actually win another year of life only to be tortured by having to revisit this ritual again and again on an annual basis? In this paper I will inspect some of the symbolism, irony and situational settings used by the author Shirley Jackson to try to give a better understanding and insight into her mind and motives behind the writing of “The Lottery”.
The overall setting is which we find this story is that of a tranquil …show more content…
It is Mrs. Delacroix who picks up a stone so large that she has to use two hands and initiates the final scene by telling others to "come on" and "hurry up” (Pearson) as if there is no time to waste. It is this action that shows that there is no mercy for the unfortunate victim, no matter how closely they may have been held as a friend prior to the final drawing. However the one thing that tops all the others is committed by her own son, Davy Hutchinson. "The most pathetic figure of all is Davy Hutchinson, who survives the drawing, but who is forced, unknowingly, to take part in the ordeal. Someone gives him a few pebbles so that he too may share in the collective murder of his mother" …show more content…
We hear of the stoning of people in foreign countries for acts as innocent as converting religion. Mosul, Iraq - According to the Kurdish website (Jebar.info) up to 1000 men from the Yezidi Kurdish community of Mosul killed a teenage girl whose only crime was running away to marry a Muslim man whom she loved and had converted to his religion. (Leak.com) Does the reading from a paper the verdict of a death sentence by twelve jurors not constitute the same as that of the slip of paper with the black dot that Tessie was left holding in the end? Or on a lighter note, to what may seem to be a more civilized version, but still holds tightly to the ties of the will of the group. Does the television hit shows Big Brother and Survivor not depict a modern day adaptations of “The Lottery” without the bloodshed? Does not the pulling of names from an urn seem eerily similar to that of the “black
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