The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, Essay Example

Generally in the stories, the settings are provided to assist in building the temper and to predict the things that may come up. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is such type of story which settings force the reader of this story to consider the positive outcomes. On the other hand, these settings description predicts exactly the contrary of what is to appear. Furthermore, in the end the theme which we observed directs us to consider that where the human beings sanity lies.

The story starts with such settings in which Shirley Jackson explains that the day and year in which the story created. She also expresses that school has presently let out for the break of summer period, letting the reader to suppose that the year time is early of summer period. Shirley also tries to emphasis on the day beauty and the nature brilliance. This presents the positive viewpoint and put the reader to relax into what looks like to be a contented story setting.

Moreover, the depiction of people and their activities are very usual and not inconsistent. Women gossip, children play cheerfully, and men indifferently discuss about farming. Every person is coming jointly for what looks like to be festive, enjoyable, even occasion of celebratory. However, the enjoyable explanation of the story setting establishes an impression in the story.

The setting of story obscures the brutally violent and ritualistic customs for instance the Mrs. Hutchinson’s stoning, who challenge to confront the custom. It is very evident that custom is much popular in this simple and small town. The male figures in “The Lottery” are “discussing of rain and planting, taxes and tractors”. This is due to the customs depicted by the Shirley are supposed to have an influence on the crops. In this story the children are focused significantly. Shirley develops it simply for us to think about their plays of boisterous nature and the children are portrayed in detail. I believe this focus on children stands for apparent situations of happiness in this work. I also think they are imperative needs in the story for the reason that they are trained and anticipated to conduct the traditions. For example, “somebody provide little Davy Hutchinson a stones but not in extra quantity with the intention that he will late be capable to contribute in the pebble of his own mother.

In “The Lottery”, different portions of ritual had been altered or even forgotten since long time by many people. This type of fact itself reveals that not all people agree with it, together with some other clues. One character in the story says, “It looks like that there is no more time completely between lotteries any longer”. The essence of it is that the lottery is so much recurrent or must not even be closed completely. I have a firm belief that number of people confront with the ritual practice, I also believe that the individual people feels powerless in placing a stop to it.

This with the combination of given fact number of people of the towns do not even memorize the causes at the back of ritual has direct us to the final words that they merely conduct in the system for the sake of customs. It merely goes to present that humans being are habit creatures and that on rare basis we carry on to contribute in unsafe practices. This is merely due to the individuals, we realize immobilized and not capable to take stand from negative attitudes that have completely been accepted.

 Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.