Irony in the lottery
...ecided, not by being selected. This automatically begins to confuse the reader into wondering why somebody would be complaining about winning. The title is also ironic. By the title alone the reader is lead to believe that the story is about a prize giveaway or similar to that nature. The reader arrives to the ending only to discover that it is not the case, but is the case of horrifying murder. The actions of the town folk are also ironic. Jackson begins the story by describing the children as playful and cheerful, she describes the women in the town as “exchanging bits of gossip,” (McMahan 84) and the men of talking about “planting, and rain, tractors and taxes.” (McMahan 84) By doing this she shows the town as a normal living place with actions of the towns people as normal as any other town. There are also many different hidden clues in the story that if the reader pays close attention to could possibly explain that Jackson was trying to show us the ending from the beginning. The story lets the reader hear Old Man Warner say “used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’”(McMahan 87) Also the names throughout the story have symbolic meaning such as Summers, which could mean the time the lottery takes place. Adams which can describe the meaning of man. Graves which could possibly mean death or Old Man Warner which could mean death is near. The story also begins to display its ironic ending to the reader as it explains that the men in the group were holding all the small pieces of paper and beginning to slowly turn them o...