Irony of The Lottery

Authors Note: The purpose of this is to show all of the ironic events in the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

            There are over 100 major lotteries worldwide, but in this story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, it is a different type of lottery. Usually in a lottery you would want to win, but the ironic thing about this is story is that you want to lose. If you win the lottery, you get stoned to death and if you lose you get to live another year. There are many more ironic events that occur throughout this story.

            For instance, another ironic event that happened in the story, “The Lottery” it seemed that the boys in the story were stacking rocks because they were just being kids and playing, but as pointed out at the end of the book, they were stacking rocks to throw at the unlucky winner of the lottery. Also an ironic event in “The Lottery” was the manners of the town. In society today, adults teach children to be nice and courteous to each other. In this village they are teaching kids to throw things at each other and teaching them that violence is okay. Along with manners of the village is that the wife’s husband didn’t even seem to care that his wife was going to die.

            In conclusion, there are so many twisted and wrong things with this village. There also are many ironic events such as stoning a woman to death to kids being taught to be violent. I don’t see how people could live like this, but that is why this is a book. These are just some of the ironic events that happen in the story “The Lottery”.