home...

title...

biography...

protagonist...

symbol...

description...

responses...

theme...

sources...

links...

credibility...

Links

"'The Lottery': Symbolic Tour de Force."

A scholarly analysis of Shirley's Jackson "The Lottery."

"Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'"

Jackson's personal reflection of the story, also contains possible study questions.

Kosenko's Analysis of "The Lottery"

Peter Kosenko's in-depth analysis of "The Lottery." He offers interseting insights to various literary aspects of the story.

The Works of Shirley Jackson

This site offers vauable information regarding the life of Shirley Jackson and criticism on some of her works.

"The Lottery"

Read for yourself Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."

QUIZ! :)

We have included these questions to help you think critically when reading Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” We wrote these questions, and the responses are our own personal interpretations. Whether you agree or disagree, we hope they give you some direction in your own analysis.

1. From the context of the story, who controls the town? Explain.

2. Is structure of the town and the lottery democratic? Explain

3. Which characters are static and which are dynamic?

4. How is the choice of the lottery foreshadowed?

5. What is one of the themes of “The Lottery”?

6. What character do you most believe would agree with the need for strong work ethic and why? Support your answer with text.

7. How were women viewed in the village? What roles did they serve? Give examples from the text to support your answer.

8. What does Mrs. Delacroix’s extra-large stone say about the loyalty and logic in “the Lottery”? What does the large stone represent? How might she justify the killing of Tessie?

9. How does Jackson trivialize the grave practice of the community’s traditional stoning, and what message might Jackson be trying to convey to the reader through the treatment of the characters’ behavior?

10. How does Jackson’s choice to withhold the ultimate purpose of this tradition until the end of the story prove to be an effective way to communicate with her readers?



ANSWERS

1. Mr. Summers, Mr.Graves and Mr. Martin are the leaders of the town. Because, in the story, Mr.Summers owns the village’s largest business and also the major of the town. Mr.Summers has more “time and energy to devote to civic activities.” It indicates that he has money and leisure. Mr.Graves is the government official; the postmaster, which shows his high politically position in the town. Mr. Martin is economically powerful because he is the grocer in the village. Also the fact that three of them are in charge the annual lottery in the village indicates their social class among the three hundred people in the town.

2. No, the town isn’t a democracy and the lottery is not democratic because if it were, people would be able to attend the lottery at their own will instead of making it mandatory, and all people would have an equal chance of being selected. People like Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin being in charge of the lottery suggests that they are above everyone, which is not a characteristic of a democracy.

3. The numerous townspeople that are presented to the reader are static characters because their personalities are not very developed and they do not experience a change in their personalities. Not one of the townspeople rebels against the horrible sacrificial killing of one of their own people. They all readily go along with the yearly tradition, seeing it as necessary and normal. The only character that is dynamic is Tessie Hutchinson. She experiences a personality change when at the beginning of the story, she eagerly participates in the yearly ritual and urges her husband to hurry up and get his slip of paper. However, when it is she who must be stoned, she automatically sees the horrifying tradition as unfair and wrong. Her opinion has totally changed. However, she stands alone against a whole town that has stones ready to throw at her.

4. If work ethic and the lottery choice are linked together, the choice of Tessie Hutchinson is foreshadowed. Tessie’s late arrival to the lottery displayed her absent-mindedness and the reaction of the town proved that she was looked down upon and thought more as a joke of the town. Tessie’s character did not fit the mold of the town thought a woman should be. Her late arrival and her out-spokeness separated her from the rest of the women, foreshadowing her as the lottery’s choice.

5. One of the themes of “The Lottery” is hypocrisy. This is seen in the story when just moments before the lottery, Mrs. Delacroix is joking with Mrs. Hutchinson about how late she is. However, when Mrs. Hutchinson is selected to be stoned, Mrs. Delacroix forgets her friendship and selects a stone so large that she has to pick it up with both hands. She even urges the others to “Come on and hurry up.” Mrs. Delacroix seems to be a close friend of Mrs. Hutchinson at the beginning but we see her true evil nature when she is eager to stone Mrs. Hutchinson relieved that it was not she herself that was chosen. Mrs. Hutchinson also expresses hypocrisy when she rushes her husband by saying, “Get up their Bill.” However, when they are the ones that have the unlucky slip of paper, she insists, “It wasn’t fair. You didn’t give him enough time to choose.” First Mrs. Hutchinson is eager to follow the yearly tradition of the lottery. However, when her husband first has the slip of paper she insists it must be a mistake. She suddenly hates the tradition once she is made the victim.

6. Old Man Warner would most agree with the need for strong work ethic. He is the oldest character in the story and is the one most set in his ways. He believes the ways of past and rejects the modernization starting to surround their town. When Mr. Adams ask him about the northern village giving up the lottery the old man replies, "Pack of crazy fools . . . listening to young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery." He believes that the lottery directly enforces work ethnic. His conviction for work ethic allows him to believe in and rationalize the lottery. He believes there is no other way.

7. From the text, it can be inferred that women were viewed, by the men and by themselves, as the subordinate class in the village. There are several lines in the text that support this by implying that the woman’s place was the home, and the woman’s place was behind her man. Their occupation was implied in the fact that they were “wearing faded house dresses and sweaters,” suggesting that their place was in the home. Also, Tessie Hutchinson arrival with the excuse of the dirty dishes in her sink explains the townspeople’s opinion of the acceptable and expected activity for a woman in the village. It is also apparent that women were seen as less than men when the women “came shortly after their menfolk.” A woman’s role in the lottery further supports this claim; drawings were performed by the “heads of families”, and a woman’s child, provided that he is of age, would draw before she could if her husband were not present. This clearly illustrates that they were seen as less valuable than the men.

8. Mrs. Delacroix, obviously a friend and neighbor of Tessie, who just moments before [the stoning] was laughing with Tessie about her forgetfulness, and reassuring her that she was fine for her tardiness. Later, her speedy selection of a “stone so large that she had to pick it up with both hands” reveals that the friendship was not as strong as her blind belief that the lottery was a just judge and her self-righteousness in not being chosen. The large stone was a symbol of her relief that she was not the scapegoat. Perhaps if the lottery were some superstitious way to purify the town of the “weakest link,” then each person secretly wondered if their sins would cause them to be chosen. This feeling of justice is how Mrs. Delacroix, the townspeople, and the family of the victim might justify the murder. No matter how unwilling the person was to die, their life was seen as a sacrifice for the good of the town. (“Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.”)

9. Response:

A. Jackson depicts the annual event as any other civic gathering. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. She portrays the gathering as an almost lighthearted event that may as well be some sort of festivity. Jackson explains, “The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, and the Halloween program”. In addition, the townspeople accept the event as a regular part of their lives, which they neither fear nor anticipate throughout the course of their year. Jackson says, “The whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner”.

B. Jackson alludes to the numbing effects of habit as relevance to her short story. Prior to the creation of her short story, Jackson grew increasingly concerned about the homogenization of peoples due to the demands of capitalism, which were strengthening increasingly during the 1940’s and 1950’s.

10. Response: Her withholding information not only enhances the suspense of the story, but it also proves to be a means of shocking her readers. The more Jackson involves her readers in the story and they begin to realize the ludicrousness of the situation at hand, the more she wins them over with the quintessence of her message to demonstrate that individuals are only free as long as they exercise their own rights to act and think independently of societal demands.

Pacehines Huffhojett’s Lovely Lottery Ladies
Hillary Pace, Susan Hines, Lauren Huff, Grace Ho, and Danielle Jett