Celeste's Lottery Essay

A Deadly Finale

In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” the author uses foreshadowing to warn the reader about the surprising outcome that the story has. Initially, Jackson gives clues about the unexpected conclusion when she describes the mood of the townspeople before the lottery started. “They [the townspeople] stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed” (Jackson 1). Here Ms. Shirley Jackson shows the way the people feel when they are joking before the lottery begins. The reader can even think that their jokes are meant to be like a pillow before the fall. They are trying to ignore what will happen and to make themselves think that everything will be fine, and that the fatality of the lottery will not reach them. Secondly, Ms. Jackson shows that nobody wants to win the lottery when Mr. Adams gets his ticket from the black box. “Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart from his family, not looking down at his hand” (Jackson 5). When the head of the Adams family gets a paper from the box and returns to where his family is, the audience can see that he stays away from them. He also is holding the paper in a way that shows that he does not want it. Mr. Adams knows how the lottery ends and he does not want to be responsible if something bad happens to him or his family. Finally, the writer foreshadows the terrible finale when the men have already chosen their papers. “By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hands, turning them over and over nervously” (Jackson 6). At this point every man has a ballot in their hands and here the author shows how they feel about it, acting evasively as if they did not want to own the paper. Normally, when someone is participating in a lottery, it is excitement that is felt. But here instead they are nervous and scared, almost like they do not want to be there, because they know how the lottery ends. After looking at all this, now the readers know how the writer has predicted the tragic ending in “The Lottery.”