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  • Essay / A Study of Shirley Jackson's Story The Annual Ritual of the Lottery

    The LotteryJune was a harvest time in our village. At that time, the fields were white with corn, sorghum and millet. June was not a month like the others, at the same time the annual lottery was held. The event was well prepared since all the inhabitants of the village, young and old, had to participate. The event was organized as a family. This year the event would take a little longer due to the increase in population, as a few young men had married, adding to the number of families. The villagers gathered for the second day in the village square, where I was told our ancestors' cabin once stood. The day before was a day of preparations while the material day marked the climax of the event, more revered than the new year. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay As usual, we gathered in the town square in front of the parents. My brothers carried as many stones as they could in their pockets. My younger brother carried three round stones in his pocket and held one more in his hand. As for us girls, one or two would be enough, for the formality, the rule being that none should be left behind. Our fathers followed. They always came before the women. It was a great dishonor for a woman to arrive at the scene of a meeting in front of a man. The men discussed everything from frogs croaking to hyenas yawning. They talked about how much better the season was than the last three or four, how the government had raised taxes, and how prolific their cats were. The women followed. They came to chat, explain their skills, discuss who is the best at grinding corn, who is the fiercest at hunting baboons, etc. It was supposed to be my fourteenth lottery, because that was my age. However, this is the eighth one I remember. I was too young to understand the precedents. Time had passed very quickly, memories of previous lotteries were still fresh. In no time the field was packed and Mr. Summers walked in with a huge black box. He was the only man in our village who had visited the coast, who had worked for the railway company and whose house had a cassette player. We all feared him more than we respected him, mainly because he couldn't watch a child being "spoiled" when he had none of his own. His wife was always by his side, known for whispering suggestions in her husband's ear. Mr. Graves followed him as usual, with a rickety old three-legged wooden stool. He was Mr. Summers' personal assistant. The box rested on the stool. Mr. Summers began folding pieces of paper and placing them in the box. The lottery could start at any time. I tried to imagine: “Who will it be today?” » While I was lost in my thoughts, Mr. Grave was busy explaining to us the relevance of the lottery. He said the Northern fools had abandoned the blessed practice and would soon see the impact of their misbehavior. He explained how the practice had evolved, from the wooden boards that people marked to the fairer papers that were thrown away after each lottery. “These instructions are more boring today than ever,” I thought. I had been listening to them for years, and yet the man and his elder kept repeating them. I was looking forward to the moment when we would see who would “win” and be a legend all year until Junenext. Summers quickly began naming the role. The families who were not represented had sent their apologies. The heads of the family took papers from the black box, starting with himself. Some men boast of having shot sixty, seventy, and eighty times in such events. When Mr. Dunbar was called, his wife pulled the trigger in his favor. He apologized because of his faulty rib. I was lost in thought as people were called one after the other. My heart leapt when Mr. Hutchinson was called: it was my father, it was time for my family! To my surprise, his paper had a black mark in the center. My mother sighed so loudly that I heard her. Abita, my childhood friend, whispered to me: “be brave, my darling”. All the members of my family walked ahead, my mother, my three brothers and my four sisters. Nine blank sheets of paper were folded in the box, followed by the one Dad was holding. Each of us chose one after carefully mixing it. We opened them slowly, my mother had the one with a mark. In no time, the entire crowd surrounded her, she shouted, calling the whole practice unfair. I watched her in agony as she cried her life out while rocks fell on her. She was the one who didn't eat the harvest.Rationale and AnalysisOriginally, "The Lottery" was by Shirley Jackson and published in 1948. The story was written at a time when America was undergoing a massive cultural transformation . Many things were borrowed from other cultures, although some indigenous practices were emphasized. The spurious practice of certain rituals in small-town America and fresh memories of World War II may have been Jackson's inspiration when writing "The Lottery" Anderson (40). The narrator presents an annual ritual in a conservative village, which has been left behind as the surrounding areas abandon the ritual, the lottery. In this ritual, several blank pieces of paper were placed in a box, alongside another with a mark on it. The family whose representative had chosen the marked coin repeated the process alone and the member who had chosen the marked coin was stoned to death. It is important to note that the box and stool were brought by two men out of the 300 members of the village, demonstrating the impact of two influential figures on the town. Stones are used as symbols to represent the deadly nature of certain rituals, while stoning to death symbolizes the trials and agony suffered by those members of society who find themselves victims of the ritual. Despite all this, the narrator explains that "the original paraphernalia of the lottery had long been lost and that the black box which now rests on the stool had been used before old man Warner, the oldest man, was even born." of the city. Mr. Summers frequently talked to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset tradition even as much as what the black box represented” (Jackson, 2). This reveals that no one in the village, including the elder, had seen the original equipment used in the lottery. People have always blindly followed the ritual. In the story above, some changes have been made. For starters, the story takes place in an anonymous village, unlike the original which takes place in a small anonymous town. This change is happening because villages are seen as bastions of cultural values, primarily with conservative residents. The narrator of the original story is not attached to the story. The narrator of the new story offers first-hand information in the first person, from.