Summary/Critique

"The Lottery"

The story, "The Lottery," features on a small town. The focus of the scene is on the tradition of the lottery held in the town each year. The author, Shirley Jackson, sets up the reader to believe something positive is going to happen. In fact, the lottery is a drawing that each family must participate in and at the end of the drawing, someone in the town, adult or child gets stoned to death. In this summary, I will show the control the town has over the children and I will also show the importance of the children in the town because of the fact that they are the ones who have to keep the tradition of the lottery going.

The morning the lottery was to take place "the children assembled first," showing that they were already used to the lottery being apart of their lives. They see it as a day of celebration. They were so used to this, they showed pride in it by "selecting the smoothest and roundest stones" and putting them in their pockets for the stoning. The action of selecting rocks shows how much control the town has over the children. Th

As I have pointed out, the brainwashing of the children in the town is important. If they are not convinced well enough they may not hold fast to the tradition. I feel that the process of teaching the children has become weaker. This is shown by the fact that in the past they were not taught the purpose of the lottery. This one factor may be the key to the fall of the lottery. Now it is simply based on fear. I feel that the people in the town want the lottery to be discontinued, but are too afraid to be the ones to stop it. By not brainwashing their children well enough, perhaps they hope that they will be stronger than their parents will. Remember that the older members of the town are the ones who will not even hear talk of changing the tradition, while the other adults talk of it being changed or given up by other towns. If this order of process continues the children will be even more open to the idea.

e town has control over them the moment the parents decide the stoning is right. By this I mean, when the parents say something is right with no objection, the children follow example and think that it's okay. An example of this is at the end of the story "someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles" to throw at his mother so he could get used to the tradition. Another example of control over the children is when the children "broke into boisterous play," instead of being scared or even amazed at the fact someone would die in a few hours and wi!

Some common words found in the essay are:
Adams Warner, Davy Hutchinson, Shirley Jackson, Summary/Critique Lottery, town children, children town, lottery held, Walker ENG, hold box, control town children, tradition eventually, control town, carry tradition, teaching children, tradition lottery, town lottery,
Approximate Word count = 994
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)