Critical Essay on Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Critical Essay on Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Thesis Statement

Someone must be sacrificed so that a good harvest can be had, this is the philosophy on which most human's believed and exist.

Introduction

The novel lottery is horrible and shocking at most. The story narrates the killing of a lady, Mrs. Hutchins by her family and friends as they believe that her death would grant them wonderful harvest. Jackson's imagination, building up of characters and writing are an immaculate piece of work. By masterfully utilizing her writing brilliance, Jackson exposes a poignant and disturbing look into the darker side of humanity. Jackson uses adjectives like sunny, fresh, and full to describe the beauty of the summer's day on which this “lottery” is being held; but all is not well in the small rural village.

Discussion

Whole paragraphs describe the children, the townsfolk and the general air of importance that surrounds the event. The black box that the townspeople draw tickets out of, gets stored in various different shops during the years time between each event; almost as if no one wants to accept full responsibility for it. There is also a disturbing undertone of “this is the way it has always been” “we have always had a lottery,” almost as if most of the town was trying to justify the performing of the lottery (Amelia Tibbett, 2008).

In the lottery, we can see just how far a society will go so that it can prosper. Of course we are shocked and repulsed by the premise that someone must be sacrificed so that a good harvest can be had, but is it really that different from what happens in our society? Both the Mayans and Aztecs believed that by sacrificing people would bring a better crop. Jackson rightfully gives us a true account of the practices prevalent in our society, hence greatly exposing our dark underbelly, our brute animal nature. “The Lottery” as a story is a success because each and every one of us has the capacity to do what happened throughout the story, as we all can very well relate to it.

“Oh no” “I could never kill anyone” one might say,” “surely we as a society are above this baser sort of behavior”. Are we? Do we as a society think we are beyond behaving like this because we are so advanced with our SUV's and our ...