The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. Through this story, the author criticizes
that people just following the long run rituals without questioning. And this paper will briefly
summarize the story and explore the literary devices used in the story.
This story starts in a village. This story begins with a scene where children collect stones and
make a pile of them. All the people who live in that village gather at the square. They chatted
with each other and were friendly to each other. This is an exposition. And they start the lottery,
which is the rising action. The heads of families start to pick a paper from the lottery box. and
lastly Mr.hutchinson picks the paper with a black dot on it, which means he wins the lottery.
After that, his wife, Mrs.Hutchinson, screams at everybody, claiming that this lottery is unfair.
She insists that they didn’t give Mr. Hutchinson enough time to pick a paper, but no one listens.
Among the Hutchinsons, it was Mrs.Hutchinson who won the lottery, and the story reaches the
climax. Everybody, including her husband, suddenly changes their attitude, and picks a rock to
throw and kill her. Mrs.Hutchinson was killed by her neighbors who were friendly to her. This is
the falling action of this story.
The themes of this story are irony and sarcasm. This story includes a number of ironies. For
instance, the author's depiction of the town at the beginning of the story makes the ending even
more shocking to the readers. Also,Mrs.Delacroix was at first very kind and nice to
Mrs.Hutchinson, but at the end of the story, she picks a very large stone to throw at her,
exemplifying another situational irony. And the author criticizes people's blind acceptance of
long held traditions by using the word 'ritual' in a sarcastic way. By doing so, the writer tells us
we should be questioning when conducting a ritual, even if that ritual is a long held tradition.
And at the beginning, the author sets a pleasant mood, but at the end of the story, it changes
into a tense and anxious one. On the other hand, she maintains an impassive tone throughout
the story, using a third person objective point of view.
In conclusion, this story describes the people who just follow the ritual without questioning. This
story starts with a pleasant mood, but it changes violently in the last part. And Jackson makes
readers suspenseful by foreshadowing.결론에 위에 썼던 내용 다시 넣어줘야지.