The Lottery
The story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson told us about a lottery, but it’s not about the award the winner may have. The author used a third-person view to keep the outcome of the story unpredictable. This story happened on a wonderful “morning of June 27th which was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day”. It led readers to think that this story is a happy and warm one. Actually, it is a cruel and terrible story. This kind of composition technique enables the ending of the story to be ironic. The story is about the unlucky lottery which is ticket to hell. Relating it to a famous Chinese logion “Lottery in June, corn is heavy soon.”People in the village do something to pray for good harvest. For instance, people prepare pigs and cows to be presents for the deity of the sky. Typically, a lottery is considered as something good because it usually involves wining awards such as money or prizes. In this lottery it was about who would have to die. So the title is the first great irony. The people of the town were happy and going on as if it was every other day. The situation where Mr. Summer was always trying to innovate the traditional ritual, but he never said anything about stopping this horrible tradition until his relatives were chosen. It points out that the ignorance couldn’t be an excuse. Another important aspect of this story mentioned is how relentless people can be. When the old custom will start, everyone of the town seemed to be calm and going on as if it was every other day. Someone even tried to hurry it up to begin their normal work. As if it was not a murder. On the contrary, it made that killing of a person just like the killing of an animal. “Time sure goes fast.”—Mrs. Graves said. As far as the lottery was concerned, people just thought of finishing this massacre as soon as possible. How cruel they seemed! At the end of the story, when Mrs. Hutchison is chosen for the lottery, even “The children had stones already and someone gave little Davy Hutchison few pebbles.” What a chilling picture it was! What they need is the good humanity. From the description of the villagers, I came to the conclusion that human beings are basically sinful. The last important point of this story is that the names of the