Death In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Following a blind person, both people end up in a ditch. This was what the lottery, short story tried to explain. Shirley Jackson wrote the story in 1948, which was based in a small town setup where villagers participated in lottery game (Oakes, 2004). Shirley was born in 1919 in a family of literary artists and was one of the American influential authors of supernatural literatures such as Haunting hill house (Murphy, 2005). The lottery was her second book and although she was among the celebrated writers, the book received major criticism from other writers and family members because of his way of addressing wickedness in the society (Peter & Fiore, 2010). The book was about lottery game in a small village in America. The game involved picking of slips that determined whether one lived or was stoned to death by other villagers. Mr. Summer headed the lottery where each villager had to pick a slip and the other who picked a black spotted slip was stoned to death. Traditions are values and moral beliefs that communities live by and despite some traditions being dangerous and inhuman, societies continue to follow them blindly.…show more content…
The event was about stoning of the community member to death irrespective of their status in the society (Bloom, 2003). It involved picking of slips in a black box. One paper had black spot that identified the person to be stoned. Mr. Summer and Mr. Grave conducted the lottery by printing the slips and facilitating the whole process. In the story, Tess Hutchinson was stoned for having picked the marked slip, which marks the climax of the lottery. Despite her complaining that it was unfair, the people went ahead and stoned her to
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