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"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson that was first published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. The story describes a fictional small American community that observes an annual tradition known as "the lottery", which is intended to ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens. The lottery, its preparations, and its execution are all described in detail, though it is not ...
- Shirley Jackson
- United States
- 1948
- English
The use of stones also connects the ritual to Biblical punishments of “stoning” people for various sins, which then brings up the idea of the lottery’s victim as a sacrifice. The idea behind most primitive human sacrifices was that something (or someone) must die in order for the crops to grow that year.
What is the purpose of the lottery? The ultimate outcome of the lottery is that the chosen individual suffers a painful death via stoning at the hands of their neighbors and family. Jackson does not explicitly mention, however, the original purpose of the lottery, likely because that fact disappeared over time much like other details of the event.
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Jackson also connects the lottery to the superstitious belief that stoning an innocent citizen will result in an increased harvest yield, which underscores its absurd nature. Jackson then creates ...
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story published in the June 26 ... By the end, it evolves into a horror story featuring the public stoning of the lottery's winner. Told from an ...
The story focuses on a village where an annual lottery is drawn, with the fate of the person who draws the ‘winning’ slip only revealed at the end of the story. Jackson’s story is about a dark side to human behaviour which had become fully exposed during the horrors of the 1940s, especially in Europe. In ‘The Lottery’, Jackson uses ...
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’….
