"The Lottery"

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, shows the people of a small village all coming together for a tradition called the lottery, which consists of every member of the community drawing rocks and the loser of the drawling gets rocks thrown at them, ultimately ending in their death.

The subgenre of The Lottery is a mystery thriller, which explains why the readers do not know exactly what is going on in the beginning, but later in the end are thrilled with the harsh truth of what the lottery truly is.

The conventions of a thriller are met because towards the end of the short story, when the winner of the lottery is finally revealed, the character (Tessie), starts to protest, and talk about how this is unfair and insane. The audience’s emotions are triggered as they read about Tessie begging for her life, and no one in the village caring that they are killing an innocent human.

In the beginning, the authors verb choices when describing the drawing of papers, it advanced the plot and get the readers into it. The audience is drawn in due to the fact that it is unknown on what is earned if you won the lottery.

After Tessie’s husband reads the paper and finds out she is the winner, people state “alright folks, let's finish quickly.” This gives off an extremely creepy mood because now the audience knows what is to come, and how the villagers are still okay with it.

The author starts off by setting the scene to get the reader to imagine a happy and normal day. The author uses phrases like “fresh warmth of a full-summer day,” “the flowers were blooming profusely, and the grass was richly green.” The image in the readers head starts them off as imagining a positive and happy scene, which could possibly be setting up for a good heartwarming story. The authors word choice and organization of sentences makes the story so nonchalant that you would never predict the horrid ending. The author includes the fact that little kids are laughing and playing, and how people are smiling and cracking jokes like it is another normal day. The title itself draws readers into thinking the story will be positive, due to winning the lottery usually being a good thing.

The authors choice in describing the characters also plays a huge role in the plot twist at the end of the story. The characters make small talk that intrigues readers into the story to make you think that there is no bad ending. The author makes two characters commence in a casual conversation, stating, “Seems like there’s no time at all between lotteries anymore,” says one characters. Another replies “Seems like we got through with the last one only last week.” They are acting as if nothing big is happening, even knowing that their family members could have a chance of dying. Completely undermining the fact that they have to all collectively murder someone, and so they are acting as if it is completely normal.