My Response to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".

Adrielle Massey
Lottery Essay
Sophomore English
21 September 2007

“The Lottery” was a story that we had to read in class which I did like because of Shirley Jackson’s writing style, how she explored the dark sides of human nature, and if you look deep enough into the story you’ll see that she is challenging stereotypes. So her writing style is really awesome because of how she would foreshadow which builds a sense of suspense and thrill. The little black box was a very suspicious item, when normally you wouldn’t think much of a small black box, Shirley Jackson makes you wonder why it was so untaken care of and what its contents hold. Humans are devilish creatures, but it hardly ever brought to light like the whole community killing an innocent every year. The fact that makes killing people even more morbid is because the members of the town thinks that it is totally okay to do so, which makes you wonder about the inter workings of their minds. Finally, but possibly the most important thing to me, is that she is challenging the stereotype that it is always a man to die. Honestly, think of every story, or even things in history, who is always exempt? The woman and children were the first to be allowed off the boat on the Titanic, and in every fairy tale no one will ever hurt the beautiful chick, but in “The Lottery” Tessie gets bludgeoned to death by some big frigging rocks. So why did I like this demented story you may ask. I’ll restate it again. I liked the way Jackson put ideas into words, and explored humanities’ closet full of skeletons, and fighting generalizations.