Lottery Ticket Essay

Below you will find four outstanding thesis statements for “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson that can be used as essay starters or paper topics.

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We are then told by the narrator of “The Lottery" that the official of the lottery is doing a “civic" duty, which we come to find out is aiding in the selection of someone to be stoned by his or her peers, perhaps even to death. For this essay on “The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, choose a few instances that provide contrast of reader expectations versus the grim reality and analyze them carefully.

Throughout the short story, contrast is everywhere, even from the names of Mr. Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #2: “Lottery in June, Corn Be Heavy Soon"The ritual and traditions of the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s story seem to be just as old as the town itself, especially since most of the residents don’t recall any of the old rituals, even the Old Man Warner, who is “celebrating" his 77th lottery.

Graves’ barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there" (213).“There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this had also changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching" (213).“Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them.

Next thing you know they’ll be wanting to live in caves, nobody work anymore, love that way for a while.

story begins on a beautiful April morning when a man wakes exhausted and returns to sleep in his thirteen-year-old son’s trundle bed, declaring, “This is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in!

” Or it begins when the wife says goodbye to the man a few hours later, walking in front of his car switching her hips a bit, a kiss blown as she heads to her office and he continues on to his painting studio.

This means that they are archaic in some ways and rooted in traditions of superstitions that seem to involve crops and human sacrifice.

During the Salem Witch Trials in early America, one of the most common complaints about presumed “witches" was that they were responsible for bad harvests, thus in many ways “The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson can be seen as a metaphor for the trials in colonial New England.

At first glance, the reader is given a story title that invokes, quite naturally, a sense of hope—the expectation that someone is going to win something.

The first few paragraphs further confirm the sense of hope; it is a beautiful summer day, the grass is green, the flowers are blooming, kids out of school are playing…but then we start to see that something is amiss in this land of perfection, plenty, and hope.