Short Story: The Lottery

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 5

The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

- Plot with Freytag's Pyramid

- Central Theme

- Symbolism

An unnamed town is preparing for their annual Lottery event. Children are playing and collecting stones, wives are gossiping, men are discussing the history of the Lottery.

Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves set up a 3-legged stool and place a black box on top of it. The mood changes.

Once Mr. Summers sees that everyone is there, he begins to call out names and each family’s patriarch comes to draw a piece of paper. Bill Hutchinson gets the first black dot. Mrs. Hutchinson starts to contest the Lottery, claiming that her husband wasn’t given any time to draw his paper.

The Hutchinson family each take turns to reveal their slip of paper, and Mrs. Hutchinson ‘wins’. She has the black dot. 

Mr. Summers indicates the villagers should finish the Lottery quickly, and the locals turn to the stones gathered earlier.

The town gang up on her, and she is stoned to death while pleading for her life.  

Tessie is the Town’s sacrifice. 

Exposition

Resolution

Falling Action

Denouement

Climax

Rising Action

Inciting Incident

 Questions on Plot/Freytag's Pyramid?

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What is 'Theme'?

What's it's purpose?

What is the central theme of The Lottery?

E.g.: Elephant Rides - popular with tourists, but the elephants are abused/beaten into submission.

Traditions in our society
that are harmful

Post a picture of any object in the story that you think has symbolic meaning

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