The Lottery and Other Stories Shirley Jackson

Written during separate times of war, Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery” and Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” written in 1974, both chillingly demonstrate the concept of the scapegoat. By definition, the...

Horrific, extraordinary, macabre, or supernatural events and “an atmosphere of mystery and suspense” are the essentials of the American Gothic genre of literature (Phillips). The Southern Gothic sub-genre sets the events in the American South,...

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery is an alarming parable that explores the concept of senseless violence whilst featuring many other prominent themes. The short story revolves around an annual lottery that a village holds to ensure that “lottery in...

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins and the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both illustrate the dangers of blindly following ritualized practices and traditions. The stories involve the use of an institutionalized drawing system,...

Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story 'The Lottery' is an exploration of what it means to belong, or not belong, to a culture and set of traditions. Jackson sets the scene comfortably, describing a traditional little village from the 1920s to the...

A symbol in the story is like a souvenir from a travel destination. It holds meaning beyond what is actually being seen. Every author has their own deft way to instill thematic meaning into a seemingly inanimate object, which then grows to become...

In the short stories “The Lottery” and “The Interlopers,” the authors Shirley Jackson and Saki (respectively) use pacing, text structure, and strong moods to build suspense. Through the use of the literary elements mentioned above, the reader is...

Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, once said that "Monsters exist, but they are far too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act...

“Racism is not about how you look, it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” (Robin Kelley, an American History Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles)

People tend to judge each other based on social constructions...

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Daemon Lover” is nowhere near as omnipresent in the American zeitgeist as her cautionary tale about conformity taken to its ridiculous extreme, “The Lottery.” Nevertheless, in its own modest fashion, “The Daemon...

There are many overarching themes that can be applied to the different genres of literature. People can relate to these themes, and they can be applied to short fiction, poetry and drama. The theme of fate is something that can be applied to all...

Miss Adela Strangeworth, from the short story “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, is a 71-year old pensioner who lives in Pleasant Street. She takes pride in her home, the people’s respect for her, and especially her roses. To most...

The plots in both The Lottery, and Rocking-Horse Winner focus on winning an eventual reward by the respective characters consequently causing the tragedy of their outcomes. In H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner, Paul obsesses over luck and...

“Goodness restrained has never been a match for badness unrestrained,” writes Umair Haque, contributor to Medium, claiming that being inactively involved in unjustifiable acts is still siding with the tormentor. This claim may be observed in “The...

Shirley Jackson’s “The Daemon Lover” is analogous to a dream that explores the narrator’s fundamental psychological issue: Fear of being abandoned by her lover and the aspiration to find a man to love her. The narrator’s apprehension is revealed...

Objects can affect character, setting, and plot in a story, and, when they symbolize something, can help give the reader a hint at what is going to happen next. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the black box symbolizes the perplexity of the...