The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Techniques

Shirley Jackson’s Narrative and Stylistic Techniques Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916 (Allen 1). She grew up near Burlingame, California, where she began writing short stories and poems as a teenager. Her family then moved east when she turned seventeen, and she went to The University of Rochester. After a year attending Rochester she withdrew in 1936, and spent her time practicing writing instead (1). She then was admitted to Syracuse University in 1937, where she published her first story, “Janice”. She was appointed to fiction editor of the campus humor magazine (1). She won a poetry contest at Syracuse where she met her future husband, an aspiring literary critic by the name of Stanley Edgar Hyman. Together, …show more content…
Her first of four children was then born. In 1944, “Come Dance with Me in Ireland”, one of Shirley’s stories, was chosen for Best American Short Stories (1). In 1945, Shirley and Stanley moved to an old house in North Bennington, Vermont, since Stanley was offered a teaching position at Bennington College (1). Shirley continued her daily writing while raising children and running a household. The Road Through the Wall, Shirley’s first novel, was published in 1948 (1). That same year The New Yorker published “The Lottery”, a story written by Shirley that yielded in the largest volume of mail ever received by the magazine. Most of the mail was full of hate. The book has now been published in many languages, read by dozens of high schools in the United States. In 1949 the Hyman family moved to Westport, Connecticut, so Stanley could commute to his new job on The New Yorker staff (1). Soon after Shirley’s second book, The Lottery or The Adventures of James Harris (a collection of short stories) was published. The Hyman family often got visits from poets, artists, composers and writers. National Book Award winning author Ralph Ellison stayed at the Hyman …show more content…
Her story, “The Lottery” was published in the New Yorker in 1948 and is often regarded as satire of human behavior and social institutions (Votteler 248). This story exemplifies the central themes in Shirley’s fiction, which include the victimization of the individual by society, the presence of evil in life, and the tendency of people to be cruel and conformist. The victimization occurs when Tessie Hutchinson is stoned by her conformed society. Their conformity is shown when Old Man Warner remarks, “Nothing but trouble in that pack of young folks,” when Mrs. Adam tells him that some places have often rid of the lottery (Jackson 297). The satire of evil identified in this story is the willingness of people to collectively engage in aberrant behavior. Often Shirley’s stories are set in small towns and are characterized by casual events that fail to give a true notion of the disturbing events that take place throughout the course of the book. This is effective because the small towns highlight the cruel or evil situation. The plot of “The Lottery” is very simple. There is no conflict; the conflict does not appear between two tangible forces: nothing to choose between and no choice between good and evil. The plot does not develop through human struggle; the idea of death only occurs by chance (Votteler 250). Many of Shirley’s short stories have simple plots likewise, and the reader must decipher small actions to