The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. It is the story of a shocking tradition practiced by the people of a certain city. Shirley ironically gives the lottery a bad meaning in her use of the word in this story. In the story the lottery is used for public stoning, contrary to what it originally means; win a lot of money. The story centers around a village during a ceremony called the lottery that ensures there is enough rain for their crops. In the story, the author uses a number of literary devices, such as irony, symbolism, foreshadowing, to name a few. In The Lottery, there is a hidden message behind the twisted story and the hidden message is how great the horrors of man's evil could be. In the story, Shirley uses irony as a function to construct the unexpected and shocking ending of her story. In the process that irony builds the shocking and expected twist of the story, it also sets the tone of the people in the story. People are very reluctant to reject an outdated tradition but the irony used by the author helps to show how this is very normal for people. The author uses irony from the beginning of the story. Shirley uses foreshadowing and irony at the beginning of the story creating a normal, peaceful town. The author gives the image of a typical normal town on a summer day which gives the reader no idea of ​​what will happen in the story. He makes sure the reader feels comfortable about the setting of the story, as if there was nothing wrong that was supposed to happen that day. When you read the first lines of the story, where it says, "Bobby Martin had already filled his pockets with rocks" (237). This line is right after the introduction...middle of the paper...r, the author uses foreshadowing to warn the readers that something bad was supposed to happen at the end of the story. In conclusion, the Lottery is a short story about a town that practices an old-fashioned tradition they call the lottery. It is a shocking story where during the ceremony, a woman is stoned to death with the belief that this will ensure a bountiful harvest. The village depends on tradition until they fail to respect human life because they stone the woman to death without any mercy. Works Cited Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1992. Print.Gioia, Dana, and Kennedy, XJ Literature: An Introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing. New York: Pearson Longman Publishing, 2011. Print.SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on the Lottery.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Network. 23 February. 2014.