Ap the Lottery Paper

AP English Comp

Mood in “The Lottery”

Every story has a central mood or multiple moods that it follows through out the story. This statement stands true especially in short stories. The great American poet and author Edgar Allen Poe once wrote, “ A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.” The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson takes this idea and uses multiple moods to finish with one last resonating mood. A mood is the feeling that the reader will have when he or she reads a work from an author. In a story the author can use certain dialect, actions, or thoughts to convey the mood that he or she is searching for. In “The Lottery” the central mood that is relayed throughout the story is the feeling of overwhelming tension, shock, and an immense sense of disgust near the end.

The first impression of the story relays a jovial feeling through the setting. The story starts out with a vivid description of “the fresh warmth of a full-summer day” and “the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green”(Jackson 255). When Jackson starts this way she is almost setting up the reader for failure. She gives the impression of a warm, tender type of story when the reality is quite the opposite. After this description everyone begins to gather for the “festivities” planned. Though this mood seems nice and all, the tension sets in when a splintered black box that the townspeople will not rid themselves of comes out and is placed on stage. When one thinks of black, one does not also think of times that are happy, but mostly of darkness and emptiness. Once this mysterious black box was introduced a metaphorical storm cloud came over the town and townspeople and initially sets the mood.

The story continues on with this mood and gradually elevates in the degree of tension. The author is taking this canvas of a story and adds strokes of small hints towards the ending, but does this hinting without foreshadowing...