The Defeat Of Women In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson
695 Words3 Pages
In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses stoning to represent the defeat of women who fall out of tradition. The lottery happens once a year in this town. Some towns have stopped the participation of the lottery all together. During the lottery the heads of the houses, the husband or sons, names are called. That person then proceeds to go to the stage to pick a ticket. Whoever has the marked ticket is the winner. The rest of their town then proceeds to stone the winner. In the story we do not find out why they have the lottery each year. Although it could be assumed, that it symbolizes that they will have a good harvest season. Feminism is not only shown multiple times throughout the story, but also outside of the story, in Jackson’s other works. “The Lottery” is a short story that is a part of a book written by Shirley Jackson. All of the short stories within this book have a similar ending; they all end with the defeat of a woman. In “The Lottery’s” case it’s the defeat of Tessie Hutchinson, who is the winner of the lottery for this year.…show more content… In the beginning of the story Mr. Summers, who directs most of the towns’ events, begins to call attendance. When a person from town is not present someone of the same family has to pull for them. When going through the list, Mr. Summers finds out that Clyde Dunbar is not there. His wife volunteers to pull for him. Mr. Summers immediately replies with the question of whether or not she had a son to draw for him instead. While reading this I immediately wondered why he would ask instead of immediately agreeing. Sexism is also shown when it is mentioned that a boy is drawing for both him and his mother, which Mr. Summers then praises. But, this is not the only thing that shows sexism throughout this