Shirley Jackson Essays

The Lottery and Other Stories

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery is an alarming parable that explores the concept of senseless violence whilst featuring many other prominent themes. The short story revolves around an annual lottery that a village holds to ensure that “lottery in...

11th Grade

The Lottery and Other Stories

Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story 'The Lottery' is an exploration of what it means to belong, or not belong, to a culture and set of traditions. Jackson sets the scene comfortably, describing a traditional little village from the 1920s to the...

College

The Lottery and Other Stories

Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, once said that "Monsters exist, but they are far too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act...