Tuesday, December 17, 2019

The Blind Obedience in “the Lottery” - 2459 Words

The Blind Obedience in â€Å"The Lottery† â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson written and published in 1948, takes place on June 27th in a small town of three hundred people. Villagers gather together at around ten o’clock for one of the main rituals called ‘the lottery‘, which takes place in the central square. â€Å"The lottery was conducted as were the square dances† (Jackson 31) illustrating the timely scheduled event. It is a normal day with â€Å"the fresh warmth of a full summer day† (Jackson 1). The men arte having regular conversations about â€Å"the planting, rain, tractors, and taxes† (Jackson 21) as they wait for the lottery to began. The lottery, an old tradition, is held every year and is done for the prosperity of the villagers. The secret†¦show more content†¦In Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty (1991), the author Arlene Skolnick goes on about the contrasting visions of 1 950s that shadowed some light on the peaceful images of family life that seemed to have appeared in situational comedies and popular magazines. However, on the other hand a nightmare vision of American family life is presented in the works of Eugene O’Neil, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. On the contrary, Jackson depicted her own unique vision of the shallow and dark side of the 1950s and reading this piece gives us a new image of Shirley Jackson as a writer. Jackson shows a great theme of man over woman which also reflects the time of that era. A literary critique by Fritz Oehlschlaeger says that a conflict between male authority and female resistance is evident throughout. At the beginning of the story boys make â€Å"great pile of stone in one corner of the square, ‘while the girls stand aside’ talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders are the boys† (45). Jackson distinguishes male and female from the very beginning by showing how the children listen to their father’s orders, but not mother’s: â€Å"Soon the women†¦began to call to their children †¦Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His fatherShow MoreRelatedBlind Obedience in Shirley Jacksons The Lottery Essay2503 Words   |  11 PagesWhen Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery† was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, it struck a nerve with readers. â€Å"The story was incendiary; readers acted as if a bomb had blown up in their faces . . . Shirley struck a nerve in mid-twentieth-century America . . . She had told people a painful truth about themselves† (Oppenheimer 129). Interestingly, the story strikes that same nerve with readers today. When my English class recently viewed the video, those students who had not previouslyRead MoreBlind Obedience in Shirley Jacksons The Lottery1059 Words   |  5 Pages The author of â€Å"The Lottery† wrote this story â€Å"to shock the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives† (Jackson 211). This story reflects human behavior in society to show how although rules, laws or traditions do not make sense, people follow them. Throughout the story the three main symbols of how people blindly follow senseless traditions were the lottery itself, the color black, and the hesitation that people had towardsRead More Essays on Jacksons Lottery: Dangers of Blind Obedience Exposed684 Words   |  3 PagesDangers of Blind Obedience Exposed in The Lottery      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Most of us obey every day without a thought. People follow company dress code, state and federal laws and the assumed rules of courtesy. Those who do disobey are usually frowned upon or possibly even reprimanded. But has it even occurred to you that in some cases, disobedience may be the better course to choose? In her speech Group Minds, Doris Lessing discusses these dangers of obedience, which are demonstrated in Shirley JacksonsRead More Essay on Shirley Jacksons The Lottery - Blind Obedience Exposed954 Words   |  4 PagesBlind Obedience Exposed in The Lottery    The annual ritualistic stoning of a villager in Shirley Jacksons The Lottery parallels tradition in American culture.   This paper will inform the reader of the effect tradition has on characters in the short story The Lottery and how traditions still strongly influence peoples lives in america.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Christian weddings hold many traditions and superstitions that seemingly defy logic.   Although most couples no longer have arrangedRead MoreNegative Effects of Obedience Exposed in Milgram Experiment vs â€Å"The Lottery†1052 Words   |  4 Pageswrongdoings men commits. Both the short story â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson and the Milgram Experiment presents us the unconscious human nature of obedience towards what perceives to be an authority. Meanwhile the results also serves as a message to promote humanity living a conscious life instead of blindly conforming with the crowd. The following paragraphs explains how each authoritative source established itself, analysis of both â€Å"The Lottery† and Milgram Experiment, and how both pieces of workRead MoreExamples Of Humanistic Obedience In Shirley Jacksons The Lottery1105 Words   |  5 Pagesnot unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.â €  (362). Jackson’s short story gave examples of how humanistic conscience and obedience can affect people’s actions. Obedience in this short story is demonstrated on three different levels as well having an overall obedience to the tradition or belief they have as a community. The townspeople in â€Å"The Lottery† act the way they do because the lack of humanistic conscience. â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson is an uncanny short story aboutRead More Inhumanity in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and Shirley Jacksons The Lottery1133 Words   |  5 Pages In Flannery O’Connor’s, â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find,† and Shirley Jacksons, â€Å"The Lottery,† both short stories deal with man’s inhumanity in different situations, and ending with a similar consequence. Jackson and OConnor both use two characters to depict man having the power to manipulate truth and objection into something people accept. In O’Connor’s’ A Good Man is Hard to Find, the Misfit is a character in need of desired assistance, troubled and confused he wanders savagely murdering strangersRead MoreSimilarities and Differences Between ‚Äà ºthe Lottery‚Äà ¹ and ‚Äà ºHarrison Bergeron‚Äà ¹950 Words   |  4 PagesIn this semester, we’ve read â€Å"The Lottery† and â€Å"Harrison Bergeron† from the textbook. They are two short stories; â€Å"The Lottery† was written by Shirley Jackson, and â€Å"Harrison Bergeron† was written by Kurt Vonnegut. This essay is to compare the similarities and differences between them. The first similarity is that both of these dystopian stories demonstrate how people force themselves in a tradition that they have been told to follow even if they have an option to seek for change, and to exploreRead MoreCharacters Of Ray Bradburys The Lottery AndAll Summer In A Day?1094 Words   |  5 Pagespositions. This was especially evident in Shirley Jackson’s short story â€Å"The Lottery† and Ray Bradbury’s short story â€Å"All Summer in a Day†. In both of these stories the characters raise hell for the protagonists, compelling the reader to ask themselves what the motivation behind these cruel actions was and why the characters allowed themselves to act in such an unjust manner. Protagonist Tessie Hutchinson of â€Å"The Lottery† is stoned to death by her own townspeople who looked upon her as their equalRead More The Shock of the novel The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Essay551 Words   |  3 PagesThe Shock of the novel The Lottery by S hirley Jackson The first time I read â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson, I thought it would be about someone in a desperate situation who wins a large amount of money. However, after reading the story I was shocked and disgusted like millions of other readers because of what the â€Å"lottery† was all about. After my shock wore off I thought about why the author had chosen to be so cynical. It occurred to me that she needed to shock people into changing for the

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