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Need help on themes in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery? Check out our thorough thematic analysis. From the creators of SparkNotes.
- The Power of Tradition
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost...
- Human Nature
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The...
- Dystopian Society and Conformity
Jackson thus meditates on human cruelty—especially when it...
- Summary & Analysis
Jackson ends her story with the revelation of what actually...
- The Power of Tradition
The story explores the themes of tradition, magical thinking, morality, evil, and conformity in a village that sacrifices one person every year. Learn how Jackson challenges the readers' expectations and raises difficult questions about the nature of evil and the cost of conformity.
- The Danger of Blindly Following Tradition
- The Randomness of Persecution
- The Coexistence of Peace and Violence
The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly. Before we know what kind of lottery they’re conducting, the villagers and their preparations seem harmless, even quaint: they’ve appointed a rather pathetic man to lead the lottery, and children ...
Villagers persecute individuals at random, and the victim is guilty of no transgression other than having drawn the wrong slip of paper from a box. The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim—even children are at risk. Each year, someone new is chosen and killed, and no family is...
The juxtaposition between the idyllic setting of the village and the brutal act of murder that occurs there works to challenge the assumption that a binary relationship exists between peace and violence. Rather than falling into one category or the other, the town’s decades-long commitment to the lottery suggests that individuals, or an entire grou...
Oct 3, 2023 · Howard Allen. Updated: Oct 2, 2023 11:34 PM EDT. What is the theme of "The Lottery"? "The Lottery" Theme and Meaning. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is one of the most famous short stories ever. It's a perfect candidate for anthologies, having a manageable length of about 3,400 words, and a shocking twist ending.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Lottery’ is the best-known story of the American writer Shirley Jackson. Published in the New Yorker in 1948 and collected in The Lottery and Other Stories, the story is about a village where an annual lottery is drawn. However, the fate of the person who draws the ‘winning’…
The main themes in “The Lottery” are the vulnerability of the individual, the importance of questioning tradition, and the relationship between civilization and violence. The vulnerability of...
Aug 31, 2023 · August 31, 2023. Shirley Jackson is best remembered for her sharply critical, feminist deflation of broadly accepted norms of mid-twentieth-century American life. It is a great irony that her most incendiary of works, “The Lottery,” is now a widely taught classic.
