Hidden Horrors in Shirley Jacksons The Lottery Essay -- Shirley Jacks

Hidden Horrors in Shirley capital of Mississippis The draught Shirley Jacksons short score The Lottery presents battle on more than hotshot level. The most important conflict in the spirit level is between the subject matter and the way the story is told. From the beginning Jackson takes great pains to present her short story as a folksy piece of Americana. Slowly it dawns on us, the untellable outcome of what she describes.From the head start sentence of the story,The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the invigorated warmth of a full-summer sidereal day the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was high green.We ar given the disembodied spirit of being in an idyllic, rural world. She enhances this feeling with fiddling vignettes that are almost cliched in their banality the little boys guarding their pile of stones in the town square the towns-people gathering and interacting with each another(prenominal) as if they were at a country fair Mrs. H utchinson arriving late because she hadnt end the dishes even the good-natured complaining of Old Man Warner. All of these scenes and vignettes are used effectively to put us at our ease and to inconvenience us from the horror that is to come.In depicting this home-spun American scene with its frightful underlying secret Shirley Jackson is chin waging on the hidden horrors of our every day life. It is no coincidence that the victim of the stoning is a woman. Jackson uses this character, Tessie Hutchinson, to comment on the sacrificial role that women play in American society.We first meet Tessie Hutchinson when she arrives late for the lottery. It is significant that she has just come from washing her dishes. This is one of the most basic jobs of housework. Wiping her hands on her apron and apologizin... ...iety that Shirley Jackson belonged to, and commented on in her writing, was one that depended on women for their work. It also demanded that a woman open herself and her amb itions, if they included anything besides raising a family, to the god of domesticity. Jackson starkly portrays the sacrifice that has been a part of the lives of all women.Tessie Hutchinson screams, It isnt fair. It isnt right, just forwards she is killed. This could be said, and has been said, about the lot of women in post-world war II America. In 1948, when Jackson wrote this story, Americans were listening about as much as the townspeople listened to Tessie Hutchinson before stoning her to death.Works CitedJackson, Shirley. The Lottery. Literature Structure, Sound, and Sense. 5th ed. Ed. Laurence Perrine. San Diego Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Publishers 1998. 180-186