The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley
Jackson about a town and its Lottery of sorts. It begins with explaining the
activities of the town itself, the preparation for the lottery mostly.
Afterwards, it goes into detail about the box for the lottery itself, about how
its worn and broken yet they aren’t changing it. The feeling of this whole
scene is fairly harmless and calm, designed to be uneventful to keep the reader
unexpected for the end.
After this scene is done, names are called for the
lottery, in a very dull scene where almost nothing else happens besides names
being called and people collecting their tickets. After this scene has
concluded, one of the townspeople receive a ticket that decides that his family
are the next candidates for the lottry. His whole family picks up a ticket and
his daughter receives the winning ticket, a blank paper with a black dot in the
middle. Her prize is she gets stoned to death. The feeling of this scene is
meant to shock or surprise the reader because of how unexpected it is supposed
to be.
