Shirley jackson

Essay by foreel121989Junior High, 9th gradeF, March 2005

download word file, 2 pages 1.0

Downloaded 18 times

Over the years many critics have wrote articles on Shirley Jackson`s numerous work. Many critics had much to say about Jackson`s most famous short story, "The Lottery". Her insights and observations about man and society are disturbing; and in the case of "The Lottery," they are shocking. "The themes themselves are not new: evil cloaked in seeming good; prejudice and hypocrisy; loneliness and frustration; psychological studies of minds that have slipped the bonds of reality" (Friedman, 44) Literary critic, Elizabeth Janeway wrote that, " `The Lottery` makes its effect without having to state a moral about humanity`s need to deflect the knowledge of its own death on a victim. That uneasy consciousness is waked in the reader himself by the impact of the story. Miss Jackson`s great gift is not to create a world of fantasy and terror, but rather to discover the existence of the grotesque in the ordinary world.

(Janeway, 58) Fritz Oehlschlaeger, a literary critic, stated that, "a conflict between male authority and female resistance is subtly evident throughout "The Lottery." Early in the story, the boys make a `great pile of stones in one corner of the square," while the girls stand aside "talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys." (259) Critic Peter Kosenko explains that Jackson distinguishes male and female authority early in the story by showing how the children listen to their father`s orders, but not their mother`s: (225) "Soon the women...began to call their children...Bobby Martin ducked under his mother`s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his eldest brother"(Lottery, 292). Jackson gives very plain, solid-sounding names to her characters:...