Shirley Jackson
Essays

“The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” are tw short stories that deal with the darkness of people. They are different in their themes and delivery, however, they also share the central theme of evil in humanity and society. This paper deals with and focuses on the setting of both stories to help show these similarities and differences.

An Analysis of "Luck" in "The Lottery" and "The Rocking Horse Winner"

A reader of both Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" must decide when can murder be an acceptable action. Is the tradition of an annual stoning acceptable?

Shirley Jackson's short story the Lottery bases its effect, at least partially, on its surprise ending. The plot of the short story seems shocking to the reader, even if there is some suspicion about a bizarre,…

¶ … Domestic Demonism: '"the Lottery" by Shirley Jackson versus "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

This paper compares and contrasts the themes, ideas, and genres of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. The former is a short story satire while the latter is a roving epic with heroes and heroines. Both, however, look at the darker side of human nature--in different ways.

Symbolism and Sacrifice in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

This paper looks at how D. H. Lawrence and Shirley Jackson use the theme of sacrifice in their respective short stories, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" and "The Lottery." Both authors have an express purpose in using the theme--Lawrence to show the power of sacrifice and Jackson to show what happens when a culture abandons the Christian notion of sacrifice.

For millennia people have believed that we cannot chose our own future and that things that happen as time passes are entirely up to our fate. However, there were also people that considered fate to be a myth, with the…

¶ … Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story The Lottery describes a ritualistic practice in a fictional New England village. The entire short story describes relatively mundane details of a traditional practice within the…