Power

Author’s Note: The current essay is on the novel “Lottery” By Shirley Jackson and its main theme, power. As the author of this essay I will be informing the reader on the novel’s main theme, power.

Winning the lottery is the greatest thing in the world, you can get over one million dollars, and you only have to pay a couple dollars for a ticket. Well, that’s not how it is in the novel “Lottery” By Shirley Jackson. In this short story a small town with a population of three- hundred people has a tradition each week called “The Lottery”; you’d think they win something special, right? Well they don’t, the lottery is a tradition where the man in the family picks a slip out of a black box, if it is blank you are free to go but, if you have a small black dot placed in the middle of the paper your family has to pick once more, then the one in the family with the black dot will get stoned ‘till they die.

I believe that “Power” is the main theme because in the novel it shows how in that time period men had so much power over the women. Men would do everything fun, while the women stayed home and washed the dishes, or went to the grocery store for dinner. For the “Lottery” Mr. Dunbar was out with a broken leg, so the mayor asked his wife if her son would pick for him but he was still under eighteen so they would not let him, Mrs. Dunbar said she would do it, right there you kind of got a visual of how everyone stared at her like they were mad.

I also believe that “Power” is a main theme because in the story it shows how much power/ control the government has over these towns that participate in this “Lottery”. The government has had enough power to keep this insane tradition on even before Mr. Warner (the oldest man in town) was born! Mrs. Hutchinson was late to the meeting and everyone was mad at her, I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen if she had not shown up, they probably would have just killed her. That’s why people are afraid one what to do, if they don’t go they could be killed, if they do go they could be killed, and if they run away they could be caught and killed, so they are basically trapped in a big death hole.

So, as you can see from the above paragraphs “Power” should be considered the main theme of the novel “Lottery” By Shirley Jackson. First, the men have way more power than the women do in that time period. Second, it shows how the government had all the power and complete control over the towns.