“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Introduction

The Lottery is a brief history of the American writer Shirley Jackson from 1948. It is about a ritual in a village in the rural areas of the United States, where every year a lottery held, and the "winner" stoned.

The critically acclaimed story that is still the best-known work of Jackson received by the public controversy. Many readers of The New Yorker, in which they first appeared, announced after the release of their subscriptions, in the South African Union of the song banned( Hattenhauer, pp. 227). The story adapted in several formats, including a ballet (1951), a TV movie (1996) and an opera.

Discussion

The shocking story begins with the description of a beautiful early summer day. The people are ordinary people, children enjoying the school holidays just begun their parents talk about the weather, tractors and taxes. Everything is completely normal and familiar; however, the reader gradually became aware that there is nothing to win in this lottery. At the very end of the story, he realizes that it is about a joint murder of an innocent person.

Once a year, the seemingly friendly people, let the idyll behind and come together to do the ritual murder on a randomly chosen member of the community. A little reminiscent of the fairy tale in which a villager regularly drawn, of a dragon or a bloodthirsty deity must be sacrificed (ibid). In this way, the dragon or the discouraged saves the whole city from God's destruction. In "The Lottery" the dragon, so to speak lies in the people themselves, it is the bloodthirsty bestial in every individual, deeply hidden in people and will only appear once a year. These ritualized tradition preserved society from disintegration, or at least believe that people in the village did. According, to the Latin phrase “Homo homini lupus” i.e. man is a wolf to his fellow man.

The lottery, is the random selection process for the murder, Jackson's image for the randomness, determined with the companies in the real culprit in our world, which are, color, nationality, origin, religion, etc. In reality, most minorities defined scapegoats, because then the majority can feel safe in Shirley Jackson's Lottery, but it can happen to anyone. Is this an unrealistic, the author's enlightening exaggeration? One can ask with the law, for if the victim chosen completely at random, then the lottery in a real company would not hold for long. ...