"THE LOTTERY"

Shirly Jackson

She was born in San Francisco in 1916. She moved to New York and she graduated from Syracuse where she met her husband. After her marriage, her and her husband settled in Vermont where she became a professor at Bennington college. Her first short story was "the Missing Girl." Her and her husband liked to entertain literary people. Her and her husbands personal library is estimated to be over 100,000 books, in addition to adult novels she wrote children's books. In 1965 she died of heart failure in her sleep. At the time of her death she was overweight and a heavy smoker and had many mental problems.

Story summary: About 300 villagers of a small town gather in a town square for the town lottery. Children run around collecting stones in their pockets and then put them into a pile. The men gather then the women do, then parents gather there children up and the families are together. Amman named Mr.summers arrives in the square holding a black box along with Mr.Graves, the postmaster. The box is an old wooden, sharp, stubby box with pieces of paper. On those pieces of paper are the families and households in the village. Tessie hutchinson arrives late because she forgot and goes to Her family and Mr summers asks who is absent and what not. Mr summers talks about the rules and how he will read names and the family mains will come up and draw a slip of paper. Mr summers finishes calling names and everyone opens their papers, word quickly gets out that Bill Hutchinson has "got it" and yessir argues out that it's not fair because bill didn't have enough time to select a paper. Mr summers asks how many kids he has in his family and bill says 3 and yessir argues again that it isn't fair. Then Mr graves dumps the papers on the ground putting 5 papers for the Hutchinson's, she mr summers announces each name one family member comes up to take a slip of paper. They find that Tessie had the slip of paper with the dot on it and the villagers grab the stones and run towards Tessie and everyone throws stones at her.

THEMES

• The danger of not blindly doing tradition
• Quote- "it isnt fair, it isnt right"
• Randomness of doing tradition
• Quote- "the villagers moved in on her" "a stone hit her in the side of the head"

CHARACTERS

• The protagonist is Tessie Hutchinsom
• The antaganist is the lottery itself
• Dynamic characters: Tessie, Mr.Summers
• Static characters: kids
• The story is told from 3rd person point of view because you dont know the feelings of the characters somit is a surprise.

Untitled Slide

Tone and Mood
The tone of the story was suspenseful.
The mood of the story started off as curious, then nervous, then changes to surprising.

SETTING

• The setting of the story has no importance except to let the reader know where they are

FORESHADOWING

• ""Children put stones in their pockets snd make piles of stones in the town square""
• Tessies late arrival and mr summers saying ""thought we were going to have to get on without you""

CONFLICTS

• Man vs society
• Mind vs tradition
• Man vs self "it is fair it isnt right"

LITERARY TERMS

• The symbolism in this story is when the children gather rocks in a pile
• The metaphor in the story is the black box falling apart and so is the village.
• The irony in this story is when Tessie walks to the lottery late.

Connection to today

Something today that I think is similar in a way is bullying because people get called out In a way and a lot of the time are killed by suicide and it is the cause of others and what they do. The connection I see is that when you see someone get bullied you should do something and when all of the villagers new that Tessie was going to die they just went along and didn't do anything.

WORKS CITED

• http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-lottery/