Literary Devices in The Lottery Essay

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is a story that has, and will continue to, be a quality piece of Literature for decades. This short story has all of the key elements that any story would die without, a good plot, dozens of Characters (whether they be major or minor), a good theme, and so much more. Also, the fact that this story is based on facts and events that actually did occur at points in time makes it so much more disturbing, and interesting.

The Lottery is a story that shows a time in the past that had traditions that, nowadays, would seem so outlandish and horrible, that we would not think that places actually used to do things like that. The Plot of the story is fairly straight-forward, a town getting ready for a lottery of some sort. The reader is not told what the lottery is about, or what the prize is, this adds some suspense to the plot. There also happens to be some foreshadowing in the first few paragraphs, the little boys gathering in the town square and making giant piles of the smoothest rocks they could, something so random was most likely made to stay on the readers mind until the end of the story, though you wouldnt be able to place the rock piles as a foreshadowing event until the end of the story.

Throughout the story there arent really any major characters, until the end of the story, and at that point the major characters are the Hutchinson family, and thats only during the last few paragraphs. If there was to be something called an antagonist in this story it would probably be either the entirety of the townspeople, or the traditions of said town. As for minor characters, almost every character besides the Hutchinson family could be considered a minor character. The only character that I would characterize as a dynamic character would be Tessie Hutchinson. She walked into the town square, uncaring about the lottery, making random conversations. Throughout the story she made a few jokes and comments that make her seem unconcerned about the lottery, just like the rest of the town, but at the end, when her family won the lottery, and later when she won the final pick, she became hysterical, and yells about how unfair it is and that they werent given a fair chance.

There are many themes that one could pull from this story, life/death, appearance/reality, known/unknown, and the duality of mankind are just a few of them, though I am going to focus on Society/individual, and duality of mankind. The society/individual theme really only comes into play during the last few paragraphs in the story, when the entire town (society) starts to stone Tessie(individual) to death because she won the lottery. And the duality of mankind theme is present throughout the whole of the story, for example during the entire story the townspeople all interact like extremely close friends or family members and then after the lottery they turn on the winner and kill him/her with no remorse.

Lastly, the entire story is an example of irony, situational irony to be exact. To present day people winning a lottery would seem like a dream come true. But, in this story winning the lottery is seen as a nightmare.

These are just a few of the hundreds of reasons that The Lottery is a quality story that will last for decades to come. Shirley Jackson Is an amazing writer and her stories reflect that.