Is her warning too powerful? I would say it’s not. Jackson warns us that traditions like the lottery can be followed today just as they have been in the past. Perhaps some could argue it is, but history speaks for itself as to all the death blindly followed tradition has created. In other words, a story may be too powerful when the extreme emotions it makes us feel are attached to an insignificant message. We could say, then, a story is too powerful when the emotions it evokes are incongruous with the theme it presents. This brings us back to our initial question: can the ending of a story be too powerful?īefore we can answer that question though, first we must recognize what makes a story powerful in the first place: its connection with our human emotions. Why? She had read “The Lottery” and was so disturbed by it that she ceased reading stories for years. When talking to her about her childhood, I was surprised to hear that she did not read for many years of her young life. a The story describes a fictional small American community which observes an annual tradition known as 'the lottery', in which a member of the community is selected by chance and stoned to death to ensure a good.

Tessie Hutchinson at the end of the story, as her friends are stoning her, cries out that “It isn’t fair.” She is effectively the voice of the reader: we realize it isn’t fair. ' The Lottery ' is a short story by Shirley Jackson that was first published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. The theme is obvious: don’t blindly follow traditions for their own sake.

She makes it possible by the townspeople being so casual, because they blindly follow what they’ve always done, even the children. Men gather and discuss their farms the women appear soon after, chatting quietly among themselves. Boys collect smooth, round stones into piles, which they guard girls stand to one side, talking. Jackson makes this twist at the end of the story so effective because the reader is imagining an innocent lottery. Townsfolk, 300 strong, begin to fill the main square.

Summary of the story the lottery