o living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while.” (276) In his way of thinking, giving up the lottery would be barbaric and a tradition of human cruelty by stoning a person to death is considered to be civilized.Iron is also present in the fact that the people appear to be concerned about the women having to draw. For example, when Clyde Dunbar’s wife had to draw, Mr. Summers asked, “Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?” (275) However, when it comes time for the stoning, they show no concern that it is a woman about to be stoned.After it was discovered that the Hutchinson family was the winner of the first round and the family had drawn again, the two children, Nancy and Bill, Jr., opened their paper and “both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.” (278) There didn’t appear to be any sorrow that even though their papers were blank, somebody in their family was about to be stoned to death.Using both setting and irony, Shirley Jackson creates a small rural community not unlike what many people live in today. And although she gives several hints of what the events to come, the ending is a great shock because we didn’t see any signs of violence throughout the story until the end. ...
