The Lottery

A detailed Summary of The Lottery

The short story of the lottery written by the Author Shirley Jackson was written in 1948 and is a very interesting piece of literature. As of all Jackson's other stories this one is also unusual and mind boggling. Jackson as a novelist often wrote many unusual, unreal or even weird stories in her very short life span. The lottery's unusual conclusion is one of great things about this story because the readers wanted Jackson to explain it. Well, Jackson refused to explain it and said that it is for the readers to decide what happens. The lottery having two main characters, a housewife named Tessie Hutchinson who is the person who wins the lottery at the end and Mr. Summers the man who organizes the lottery. Mr. Summers had brought the black box for the drawing with all the little white pieces of paper in it and he calls everyone up to pick them out. Tessie Hutchison argues about how the lottery isn't fair and how her husband didn't have enough time to pick a piece of paper. All of the other characters in this story all play a significant role by just saying a few words and by helping throw the stones at Tessie. If there were not the other characters then there would be no stoning at all. The theme of the story is all abou

t the tradition and how the lottery is such a big tradition. All though the lottery is a big tradition the people of the town are still unsure why they do they do the lottery. They all know that there have been things forgotten over the years about the rules for the lottery; but yet they still won't break tradition by stopping the lottery.

The lottery sounds like someone's going to win a prize, but when the reader starts reading the second paragraph it seems like something else is going to happen. The author uses in-depth foreshadowing from the second paragraph on through the entire story. The first hint that something strange was happening was after Jackson describes the summer morning, she alludes to the children gathering in the Village Square that just got out of school, but they are acting quite strange not like normal boys when they get out of school for the summer. Jackson told us that "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example...eventually the boys made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys". The first question we must ask is why are the boys piling stones up in the village square? At the very least we know that the stones will play an important role in the final outcome of the story. Every one of paragraphs in the story contains clues as to what is going to unfold later in the story. After all of the children gathered the men begin to fill the square, followed by all of the women. The men and the women stood together away from the many piles of s

Some common words found in the essay are:
Shirley Jackson, Bobby Martin, Tessie Hutchison, Tessie Hutchinson, Village Square, , black box, shirley jackson, tradition lottery, story reader, lottery tradition, black box pieces, original black box, lottery summers, lottery june, true meaning, tradition isn't tradition, box pieces, pieces paper, tradition lottery tradition,

Approximate Word count = 1083
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English