David Meadows
English 1123
November 26, 2017
Analyzing Short Stories
Don’t Win This Lottery "The Lottery" was published in June 28, 1948. Jackson had written this story only three weeks prior to that. This date plays a vital role in comprehending the community which Jackson was living in and the effect that the historical time had on "The Lottery."
"The Lottery" was sometimes seen to be questionable by most of its readers. There was a great deal of controversy over the meaning of the story. Readers often were disappointed by her writing but to Shirley Jackson, this story actually had no meaning because she had written the story from beginning to end without a purpose, simply as a creative expression put to words. While examining the short story from a new historical perspective, World War II and the things America had been…show more content… In this time period following the war, the American people’s attitude was positive; they never thought that something bad could happen to them. The six year long War had ended only three years before this story was published and the United States was still intact. The people of our country must have felt invincible, and did not want to be reminded of death and the uncertainty they felt during the war.
In Shirley Jackson’s short story, any positive attitude that the characters had was destroyed every June when the lottery was held, simply because the ”winner” of the lottery was stoned to death. The connotation of the word “Lottery” is that of something good, perhaps to acquire a prize of some sort. But in this story, the stoning of the winner is a significant twist, in which the positive nature of the life of the story becomes more odd. This make the story very controversial and the people of the time did not enjoy reading it. Americans did not want to hear about innocent people dying. They had enough of it and it was time to move
