Setting in The Lottery

A detailed Summary of Setting in The Lottery

Setting in "The Lottery"

The setting in a story helps to form the story and it makes the characters become more interesting. There are three main types of setting. The first is nature and the outdoors, second is objects of human manufacture and construction and the third is cultural conditions and assumptions. These three things help the reader to understand the characters better in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".

"The Lottery" is started out by being described as "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day." The flowers are blooming and the children have just gotten out of school for the summer. To the everyday reader this story starts out as a pleasant one but there is much more in store for the reader at the end of the story. Th setting leads the reader to believe that this is your normal kind of town with normal people. But it isn't until the end that the reader finds out that winning the lottery might not be as good as they thought it was.

The first type of setting that, Nature and the Outdoors plays a major role in "The Lottery". The most unusual thing about "The Lottery" is that the author never tells the reader exactly where the story is

taking place. This means that the reader has to gather clues to try and figure out where this is all happening. The are only a few clues given to help the reader out. One clue is that the men are "Speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes". This gives us two answers to a couple of questions. Obviously by talking about planting this tells the reader that this town is possibly located in the Mid-West states. Another question that is answered is what time period this story is taking place. The men talked about tractors so this allows the reader to narrow the time period to 1935 and up. Tractors had not been invented before this time

Another example is the black box itself. The black box that is being used for the lottery is not the original one but it is similar to it. Also wood chips used to be used for drawing but now there are more people in the village little slips of paper are used. The one thing that has not changed about the lottery at all is the fact that stones are still being used to kill the lucky winner of the lottery. These influences the fear in the setting because it is strange that out of all the traditions that could have been kept the one that seems the most horrifying and ironic was kept.

The third type of setting is the cultural conditions and assumptions. This is also apparent in "The Lottery" in many ways. The first way was when Mr. Adams and the Old Man start to talk about the lottery being stopped in other villages. Old

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Approximate Word count = 997
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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