The Lottery Shirley Jackson was a short story writer and novelist; however, she was also a loner and an introvert. Shirley was born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, CA. Jackson and her family moved East when she was 17, were she attended Rochester University. After doing a year, she dropped out of school, stayed at home for a year and began practicing on her writing. Jackson entered Syracuse University in 1937, where she met her future husband. Stanley Edgar Hyman, who was at the time also
Literary Analysis Many readers would assume that a story titled “The Lottery” or “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” would revolve about a standard plot with characters and conflicts that would eventually end in a happy fairy tell ending. Nevertheless, Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor have done almost exactly opposite of what the average story entails by adding major twists and turns to their stories to keep readers on the edge of their seats. The readers will notice they are constantly awaiting
the two sides of the same coin in representing narrative. Narrative subsumes many forms of literary genre. It includes: fictions, ancient epics and romance or modern novels and short stories. Abram (1999:173) states that narrative is found both in prose and verse: “a narrative is a story whether told in prose or verse, involving story events, characters, and what the characters say and do. Some literary forms such as novel, short story in prose, and the epic and romance in verse are explicitly narratives