Literary Criticism - The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - Research Paper Example

The plot of “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, commences with a depiction of the environment of a small village with a populace of about three hundred people. The people in the village, who know each other very well, practiced an annual event named the lottery. However, the story unveils on its final plot that the residents of the small village choose the person to be stoned by means of a lottery (Selwyn 110). The lottery is played by means of a draw whereby Mr. Summers, the main in charge of the lottery, draws a slip of paper from a black box.

The protagonist, Mrs. Hutchinson, the one stone at the end of the story, came late during the ritual, but at the end, she was able to unleash her real self with such a very outward expression. However, she had to be friendly with other women as the pretended to be pleased. The literary criticism approach that will be used in the paper may include about how the fictional story affected or influenced the readers, how the author has influenced the culture of today, and how the story is understood in the lens of historical context.

Jackson’s disposition of the plot has turned the story from a fiction to horror (Rosenblum and Fitzpatrick 62). He described Mr. Summers as a “jovial,” a respected and a significant man who throws jokes at everyone in the village (Jackson 25). Alongside the portrayal of each character is the hypocrisy that everyone is trying to ignore the terrible event that continued for seventy-seven years. Despite everyone’s expressive outward congeniality, there conceals an evil character that is waiting to be unleashed as the story nears to cessation, such as Mrs.

Dunbar and Mrs. Delacroix who were used to be friends of Mrs. Hutchinson. Jackson uses an ordinary language in the character of the protagonist, wherein Mrs. Hutchinson consistently utters about a disparity in the lottery. The first Assertion from Thesis statement The author of “The Lottery,” a four-page-sized short story, was named when it was first published, but the biographical information of the former and the story’s genre was not disclosed. This evidences that the credibility of the short story was unconvincing because of the anonymity of its author.

Literature suggests that disclosing the genre, the time when the story occurs, and information about the author would likely provide benefit among readers so as for them to imagine how life was like during such time (Green 77). Second Assertion from Thesis statement “You did not give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It was not fair!” (Jackson 28)--these were the lines uttered by the protagonist, Mrs. Hutchinson, which cause sympathy of the reader to her character.

Jackson uses language that is so appealing to the reader’s emotions. Literature implies that both emotional and the imaginative effect of the context on the reader, which is the power of the author to transform the message into emotion, can lead the latter to decide or act (Ramage and Bean 81-82). The neglection of the other residents to Mrs. Hutchinson’s appeal was truly a depiction of their cowardness to fight for the right. The third Assertion from Thesis statement The impact of choice of words on the reader can all be seen from the single word: unfair. Mrs. Hutchinson consistently uttered the disparity of the lottery, but Mr.

Summers and all other residents, who used to be their friends, neglected her.