Free Essays on The Lottery

The Lottery: Foreshadowing Every June twenty-seventh the villagers in the small town gather in the square for the annual â€Å"lottery†. The children usually arrive first. They play and gather stones in preparation for the drawing. The husbands and fathers are the next to gather. They tell jokes, but â€Å"they smiled rather than laughed.† The men do not seem to be as excited as the children are. When finally the women arrive, the families form into their respective groups and they wait for Mr. Summers- the lottery official- to commence the drawings. There are volunteers to hold "box" from which the â€Å"heads of the families† draw the slips. One-by-one the papers are withdrawn from the customary box by chosen heads of the families. As instructed by Mr. Summers, no one is allowed to view the slips until all the paper pieces have been removed. They are called up in alphabetical order until every family is represented by a slip of paper. Once the drawing has finished they are allowed to look at their paper slips to see who receives entrance into the next round of the lottery. On this day in the story, the one who holds the fateful slip of paper is Bill Hutchinson. With the next round, each of his family members is asked to draw their own piece of paper from the black box. The three children are the first to draw. Little Dave chooses a slip, then Nancy and Bill Jr. is the last of the children. Tessie Hutchinson- Bill’s wife- is the fourth to draw, with Bill being last of the family members to receive his fate. One at a time the pieces of paper are opened to reveal each person’s secret. The crowd voices their relief as the children’s papers show them to be out of prize contention. Bill then opens his slip to find that, he too, will not be able to claim the lottery winnings. Tessie’s paper is opened last, to reveal that she is the winner. She has the â€Å"black dot† on her slip, which had been... Free Essays on The Lottery Free Essays on The Lottery Every society has endless sides to it, which some people may consider certain actions morally wrong while others view them simply as a part of every day life. Shirley Jackson uses many successful techniques to bring her story, The Lottery, to a height of excitement and confusion as the names were drawn to a state of silence or anger when the stones are thrown. Shirley Jackson uses symbolism, diction, and characterization and to show the utmost power ritual has on society. Shirley Jackson implants many examples of symbolism throughout her story The Lottery. She chose them for a purpose or reason in order to pick your mind and make you stop and think about what happened and more importantly why it happened. The first thing mentioned is the date and time of year. June 27th which just happens to be a week after the summer solstice (Windows). It is described as a â€Å"clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day† (Jackson). The setting could not have been a better time of the year for a happily town meeting then a bright, cheerful, yet calm summer day. As the town gathers, a three-legged stool is brought up and placed in front of the entire village and an old black wooden box is placed on it (Jackson). The three-legged stool symbolizes instability most likely among the villagers. A stool with two legs will not stand up, and a stool with four legs is going to be the strongest, so a three-legged stool is right in between, not quite sturdy yet not utterly useless. The black box set on this tipsy stool symbolizes death in most ways (Protas). The box is described as â€Å"black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color†¦[and] made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it† (Jackson). Death is one of the main things in life that is sure to happen at one time or another and having it placed directly in front of the villagers in a old, black, wooden box symbolizes it is going to happen t... Free Essays on The Lottery The damaging effects of blind adherence and religious hypocrisy are just two of the many reoccurring themes mentioned throughout the following literary pieces: â€Å"The Lottery,† â€Å"On The Road,† â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard To Find,† â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† and â€Å"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.† This following paper will support its thesis through the interpretations and perspectives of, â€Å"The Lottery,† by Shirley Jackson, shows the damaging effects of blind adherence. In the infamous short story, an unexamined ritual has been taking place longer than living has been alive. This ritual is the stoning of one randomly selected person from town on the 27th of June. This small town continues to enact this ritual though it is considered barbaric in modern times. To understand the present you must know the past. The original purpose of the lottery was to sacrifice to the god of the harvest. â€Å"Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,† as Old Man Warner said.(Jackson 852) However, the question at hand is, Is the ritual still necessary? According to the introduction to the story, â€Å"The flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.†(Jackson 849) Clearly there is no need for a human sacrifice, it seems that Mother Nature is ensuring a good crop for that year. The harverst god need not be appeased.... Free Essays on The Lottery The Lottery: Foreshadowing Every June twenty-seventh the villagers in the small town gather in the square for the annual â€Å"lottery†. The children usually arrive first. They play and gather stones in preparation for the drawing. The husbands and fathers are the next to gather. They tell jokes, but â€Å"they smiled rather than laughed.† The men do not seem to be as excited as the children are. When finally the women arrive, the families form into their respective groups and they wait for Mr. Summers- the lottery official- to commence the drawings. There are volunteers to hold "box" from which the â€Å"heads of the families† draw the slips. One-by-one the papers are withdrawn from the customary box by chosen heads of the families. As instructed by Mr. Summers, no one is allowed to view the slips until all the paper pieces have been removed. They are called up in alphabetical order until every family is represented by a slip of paper. Once the drawing has finished they are allowed to look at their paper slips to see who receives entrance into the next round of the lottery. On this day in the story, the one who holds the fateful slip of paper is Bill Hutchinson. With the next round, each of his family members is asked to draw their own piece of paper from the black box. The three children are the first to draw. Little Dave chooses a slip, then Nancy and Bill Jr. is the last of the children. Tessie Hutchinson- Bill’s wife- is the fourth to draw, with Bill being last of the family members to receive his fate. One at a time the pieces of paper are opened to reveal each person’s secret. The crowd voices their relief as the children’s papers show them to be out of prize contention. Bill then opens his slip to find that, he too, will not be able to claim the lottery winnings. Tessie’s paper is opened last, to reveal that she is the winner. She has the â€Å"black dot† on her slip, which had been... Free Essays on The Lottery â€Å"The Lottery† For my analysis essay I have chosen to write about on of the characters in the short story â€Å"The Lottery†. â€Å"The Lottery† is a short fictional story by Shirley Jackson. The character I have chosen to write about is Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson. Mrs. Hutchinson stood out for me in this particular story, and I chose to write about her because from the moment she was intro to the story I knew she was going to die. I guess from reading the statement â€Å"I knew she was going to die† you would be thinking that she is a victim in this story. I thought the same thing at first but the more into the story I got the more it became apparent that it was completely the opposite. The more I read the more I tried to understand this small village and all of its traditions. It seems as thought the whole village is a victim to me though, because they loose valuable members of the community each year and they don’t think this is a problem. The character Mrs. Hutchinson sounds like a flat stereotypical female small town villager. The kind you picture in your head when you think about small villages wearing flower dresses and baking apple pies. As the women of the village are being described to the reader, the image of several women standing around wearing the same long flowered dresses with knitted sweaters with different color combinations comes to mind. â€Å"The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came after their men folk†. The character is reveled in untimely fashion and by this I do not mean into the story, but she is the only person to arrive late to the village square. When I read that Mrs. Hutchinson was late it reminded me of an old saying that my mother would say to me when I would show up late. â€Å"You are going to be late for you own funeral†. I find this quite ironic for Mrs. Hutchinson for although she doesn’t yet know it she is late for her own funeral. I also find it interesti... Free Essays on The Lottery A Close Encounter with Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery† â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson is a story in which the setting sets up the reader to think of positive outcomes. This description of the setting foreshadows exactly the opposite of what is to come. From the beggining Jackson takes great pains to present her short story as a folk story. Slowly, it dawns on us, the terrible outcome of what she describes. The theme learned at the end of the story leads us to think of where the sanity of human beings lies. In addition, the most important conflict is betweeen subject matter and the way the story is told. From the very first sentence of the story, â€Å"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth......† We are given the feeling of a rural world. Shirley Jackson tells the reader what time of day (10:00) and what time of year (â€Å"summer†) the story takes place. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a typical day it is in a small town. She also describes that â€Å"School was recently over for the summer†, letting the reader infer that the time of year is early summer. The beauty of the day and the brilliance of nature is stressed by â€Å"clear and sunny,with fresh warmth....flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green.† This provides the positive outlook and lets the reader relax into what seems a comfortable setting for the story. The description of the people and their actions is very typical. Children play happily, women gossip, and men casually talk about farming. Everyone is coming together for what looks enjoyable, festive, even a celebratory occasion. However, the pleasant description of the setting creates a facade within the story. The setting covers the ritualistic and brutally, violent traditions such as the later stoning of Ms. Hutchinson, who dared to defy tradition. The immediate conflict is the passions of the townspeople who gath... Free Essays on The Lottery â€Å"The Lottery† The story of â€Å"The Lottery† is a story that is filled with a lot of misconceptions and a misunderstood tradition. â€Å"The Lottery† is a story that takes place in a small foreign town on a warm and sunny day, you will see further down in the paper the significance of the weather. This story expresses a lot of controversial ideas and conflicts that make many people think and reevaluate their culture. It also brings us to realize that there are still many cultures that still use barbarous, ignorant, outdated traditions that have no significant meaning. The theme of â€Å"The Lottery† is focused around the relevance of some cultures and their traditions. In this story there are three main focuses that the author focuses on, they were ignorance, symbolism, and irony. One of the most distinct characteristics of this story is the ignorance; it is based around a very ignorant and outdated tradition. One of the more ignorant things that take place in this story is the stoning of a human for a sacrifice. The most ignorant thing in the story of â€Å"The Lottery† is the fact that they want to stop it, but they continue on to do it because of tradition. In some cases like this one tradition is not important enough to sacrifice a human life for something that has nothing to do with what it is being done for. The story of the â€Å"The Lottery† contains a great deal of symbolism there are a lot of simple things in the story that mean more than they appear to. One of the most important things in the story of â€Å"The Lottery† is the box that contains all of the slips of paper for the lottery. This box represents the tradition of the lottery; there is no significant reason for using the box besides tradition. Another example of symbolism in the story of â€Å"The Lottery† is the significance of Old Man Warner. Old Man Warner represents wisdom and the tradition of the lottery. He is the only one in the town who real... Free Essays on The Lottery The story of â€Å"The Lottery† is a story that is filled with Shirley Jackson’s view of her society. â€Å"The Lottery† is a story that takes place in a small foreign town on a warm and sunny day; you will see further down in the paper the significance of the weather. The story was used to express many controversial ideas and conflicts that can make people think about the culture that they are currently living in. Freidman notes that one of the most interesting points of this story is that the village is a typical society that any modern person could live in, â€Å"Jackson’s story portrays an â€Å"average† New England village with â€Å"average† citizens.† This points out that there could be things like this going on around us with out people even thinking that there is something wrong with it. It also brings us to realize that there are still many cultures around us that are barbaric and use outdated traditions. The theme of â€Å"The Lottery† is focused around the traditions that all people have and re-examining where those traditions come from. In this story there are three main focuses that Jackson has, they are ignorance, symbolism, and irony. One of the largest tools that Jackson uses in this story is ignorance; it is based around a very ignorant and outdated tradition. In one of Raglands critiques she states, â€Å"The Lottery is a story of mediaeval customs and how misplaced they are with in modern society.† One of the most rediculous points in the story is when you realize that they are stoning a human for a sacrifice. The most ignorant thing in the story of â€Å"The Lottery† is the fact that everyone in the town wants to stop the stoning, but nobody will do it because it is a tradition. In some cases, especially like this one, tradition is not important enough to sacrifice a human life. â€Å"The underlying current of evil would have to be the actual barbarism inherent of the lottery itself,† Ragland states. Ragla... Free Essays on The Lottery â€Å"The Lottery† Shirley Jackson wrote â€Å"The Lottery† in 1948, not long after the Second World War. The horror of the Holocaust was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Jackson wrote this story to remind everyone that we are not so far from this world of sadistic human sacrifice. She created a town, very much like any American town, with the gathering of the towns people to celebrate some annual event. She wanted to shine a mirror on contemporary society, a reflection of humanity, or rather, inhumanity. One would think that she was protesting against the shallow hypocrites that rule the world. The town sets up this lottery in a very practical way; there were several things that were a part of the ritual that the town allowed to fade from practice. But the town still saw it necessary to stone a citizen to death once a year just because that was the way it was always done. Shirley Jackson wanted the world to try and find another way, to break away from traditions and be more humane human beings. Once the heads of household have drawn, everyone looks at the slip of paper in their hands and at the same time everyone is praying that it is not their family. Once again the family members draw and each one is praying it is not they, at the same time they know that they are about to lose a loved one. Everyone has felt these same feelings. A friend loses her husband or child and we say a little prayer of thanks to what ever power each of us believes in , thank goodness it was not me. When Tessie Hutchinson realizes that her family has been chosen she says, ‘ I tell you it was n’t fair. You didn’t give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that.†(233) â€Å"The Lottery† makes one feel guilty for desiring one’s own survival. It reminds us to listen to new ideas, especially ideas that break unnecessary traditions. The world should embrace those that live their lives in a fashion that does not reflect society’s idea take les... Free Essays on The Lottery Symbolism The Lottery In Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery,† set in a small fictional town on June 27, the townspeople gather to conduct a lottery. At the end of the drawing, one of the townspeople will be dead. The symbols chosen to use are Old Man Warner, the black box, and the stones. Old Man Warner is the oldest man in the town and he states in the story, â€Å"seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery†; he is the only person to survive the lottery for seventy-seven years. We can look at Old Man Warner as a legend in that town for surviving so many lotteries. He has been in the lottery so long that he can tell how the lottery and the townspeople have changed, from the first time he was in it; he says â€Å"It’s not the way it used to be† and â€Å"People ain’t the way they used to be†. The black box symbolizes ritual and tradition. The ritual is the sacrifice for the crops each year; the townspeople believe that if they do not make this sacrifice there will not be any crops to harvest for this season. The tradition is that this is an ongoing event, which takes place every year in this small town. The townspeople are accustomed to the tradition that has taken place for as long as they have lived there. Also, I think that the tradition may be getting old and worn out because of the condition that the black box is in, and how it travels from house to house each year. The stones symbolize man’s inhumanity to man because this shows how man can take it upon himself to portray God for as simple as belief that is pointless and is only in the mind. The children set the stones aside to be thrown at the one person that wins the dreaded lottery that every one is so anxious to play. The stones also symbolize death because the townspeople would hurdle stones at the lotto’s winner. Further more, in Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery,† there are many symbols in the story.... Free Essays on The Lottery Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery†, raises many questions in the back of a reader’s mind towards the destructive yet blind rituals of mankind. â€Å"The Lottery† clearly expresses Jackson’s feelings concerning mankind’s evil nature hiding behind traditions and rituals. She shows how coldness and lack of compassion in people can exhibit in situations regarding tradition and values. Jackson presents the theme of the short story with the use of symbols and setting. The setting of â€Å"The Lottery† supports the theme. Settings are constructed to help build the mood and foreshadow things to come. In the lottery though, the setting foreshadows exactly the opposite of what is to come. The story begins with a description of a seemingly cheerful environment. Jackson creates a comfortable atmosphere by describing the activities of the residents of the town. She describes children breaking into â€Å"boisterous play and their talk still of th e classroom† (310). Men and women are gathered in the center of the town talking about farming and taxes or into gossip. The date of the story is June twenty-seventh which Helen E. Nebeker states in American Literature, has â€Å"symbolic overtones which alerts us to the season of the summer solstice with all its overtones of ancient ritual† (102). Jackson’s description of the setting supports the theme of the story by showing how mankind is capable of cruel acts regardless of their environment. Symbolism in the story also supports the theme of â€Å"The Lottery†. The very names of the characters in the story are laden with meaning. The names of Summers, Graves, Warner, Delacroix and Hutchinson hint at the true nature of the characters. Mrs. Delacroix’s name means of the cross in Latin; therefore hinting at Tessie’s sacrificial killing. Even tough Mrs. Delacroix seems to be a friend to Mrs. Hutchinson it is she who is shown to pick up the lar gest rock and promotes other people to stone Tessie. Mr. S... Free Essays on The Lottery When I think of a lottery, I picture someone swimming in a pool of money, throwing the bills into the air, just to have the joy of watching them float back down to their side. I thought that’s where this story was going, because that's how the author sets it up. But even before the tragic end to this story, I started to pick up on some unusual things. First of all, I found the town way too skittish and rather uneasy. I know that I would be nervous for a lottery too, but not to the extent where I feel sick over it. That’s the kind of feeling that I got for the town. â€Å"...most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around.† This quote makes me pictures a mob of people standing around the black box and Mr. Summers. All of them trying not to make eye contact, staring at their shoes, praying they get to live another year. I went back over this story and read it twice, the second time I highlighted all of the things that I found unusual or interesting. If you look at my paper, almost half of every page is highlighted. Something I noticed was that the women would refer to their husbands as their ‘old man’. I wasn’t quite sure why they did that, but then I thought about the entire story. These people have been growing up in this village for probably their whole lives and each year they take the chance, live or die. If these are grown men in their thirties, forties and fifties, that's quite a long time if there’s a chance that you maybe picked to die in the next year. Old Man Warner was only 77 years old and he was the oldest man in the village. That isn’t even close to what people normally live too. When you’ve got this lottery going on, of course it’s amazing for someone to live 77 years and never get picked especially if there are only 300 people in the town. At first I thought that this town and all of the other towns that participate in the lottery had no real value for life. But ... Free Essays on The Lottery The Lottery In "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to make us aware of the pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. The story starts off on a beautiful summer day in a small town. The author describes the day as very excited but strikes a contrast between the atmosphere of the town and the atmosphere of the people gathered in the square. The atmosphere is serious, where the children are "gathered around quietly." (335) The black box is the central theme or idea in the story. It symbolizes at first some type of mystery, but as we read the ending we realize that it is synonymous with death. Someone's fate lies in an dull object, the black box. We do not always enjoy change, even if it might prove beneficial to us. The box is symbolic of our dislike of change; it is old and splintered (337) showing that we cling to what is familiar rather than change and it also symbolizes the traditions of the community. No one in the little town questions the origin of the black bo x, but accepts it as part of their lives. The lottery itself is symbolic of the absurdity of the human consciousness between compassion on one hand and the thirst for violence and cruelty on the other. An example of this is when the children are enjoying a break from school, (335) playing and being children, and suddenly they are being joined by rational adults in stoning a mother to death. It appears that tradition has blinded these people in an irrational way, making them unable to think of a reason why this possibly should not be happening. When forced with the possibility of death, human nature in all its complexity, comes down to one instinctive urge, that of survival. When Tessie was in no danger she was gossiping with the other ladies and even encouraged her husband to go and pick a piece of paper. (338) When Tessie wins the lottery; she pleads for another chance and screams for mercy. She demands that her daughters take their chances a... Free Essays on The Lottery The most common problem with adaptation between literature and film versions is that many of the books many significant assets are lost within the story as a mundane detail. Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery written in 1948 was a very well written piece of work that was very dependent on its characters to set the tone of the story. The director of the film version of The Lottery, filmed in the nineteen sixties, also used the characters to place the overall tone of the film. The director of the film, however, accomplished an astounding feat of keeping the integrity of the literature intact, and furthermore, adding additional life to the characters. The use of facial gestures, body movements, and voices added a life to Shirley Jackson’s story that did not speak falsely of the work, but made the overall situation more true to life. For example, in Jackson’s version of the story she presents Tessie, a wife and seemingly very pleasant woman. â€Å"I almost forgot what day it was† (Jackson 461). As the reader it is unclear as to Tessie’s indications of her comment. One could assume that the character is being sincere in her speaking, but just the same the reader can be lead to assume that Tessie was merely joking around and is very eager about the events that are about to take place. The director of the movie, however, took this scene from the short story and visualized and vocalized the importance of this characters moment with speech and facial gestures. Tessie enters the scene and says, â€Å"I almost forgot what day it was† (Movie). The visualization of Tessie speaking shows that she is vibrantly smiling and looking forward to playing the lottery. The visual interpretation is more efficient because this scene is critical to show an important development in Tessie’s character portrayed later in the story. Tessie’s character change is very important to the story because it shows her true feeling towards the lottery, and ... Free Essays on The Lottery Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery† is a rebellious attempt to persuade America that our traditions are being carried on by thoughtless, ignorant men. Jackson tried to symbolize men as being the carriers of death and the women as the martyrs. Jackson places the setting of the story in a very peaceful, small town. She described the day as, â€Å"...clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (Pg. 83-84).† This gives the reader a sense that everything is perfect in the â€Å"everybody knows everybody† type of town. It’s the typical American town. It’s essentially ideal. The man that she tries to portray as the ignorant man the most is Old Man Warner. Warner has been around the small town for quite some time. He holds firm in his idea that tradition should be strictly followed and never forgotten. Jackson forces the reader to only look at the fact that Warner is just a stubborn, narrowminded man. He criticizes other towns for dropping the lottery, saying that the citizens are â€Å"....a pack of crazy fools (Pg. 87).† Old Man Warner isn’t even happy with the way that the lottery is being run at the present time. He says, â€Å"It’s not the way it used to be, people aren’t the way they used to be (Pg. 87).† Even though the town is carrying on with the brutal tradition in a more modern approach, he still isn’t satisfied. This still doesn’t stop him from proceeding with the stoning. To the reader, he is nothing more than a stubborn man.Jackson doesn’t stop at Warner. There are many other men in th e story with names that have symbolic meaning towards death and doom. Mr. Graves is a prime example of a male citizen in the town with a bit of authority. He is one of the two men that arrange and proceed with the ceremony. His name, Graves, screams death and darkness. The name itself gives the reader a bit of an unconscious thought that Graves... Free Essays on The Lottery â€Å"The Lottery† begins happily â€Å"clear and sunny, with (the) fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green† (255). The grass is describe as â€Å"richly green† and that â€Å"the flowers were blooming profusely† (255). These descriptions of the surroundings give the reader a nice feeling and nothing wrong with this unique town. It also pulls the unwary reader into a comfortable position by making the reader feel as if its going to be a story with a pleasant plot and happy ending. Since when one thinks ‘Lottery’ one thinks ‘lots of money’, but the reader is in store for an unexpected surprise full of changing setting, symbolism, tradition, and terrible acts. The setting in the beginning of â€Å"The Lottery† creates peacefulness and tranquility; it creates an image in the mind of a typical town on a normal summer day and what time of the year the story takes place. The villagers are a seemingly ordinary people in an ordinary American town. Pleasant, friendly, and simple, the men talk about â€Å"tractors and taxes† (255) while the boys run around piling up stones. The time of day is obviously set in the morning and the time of year is early summer. There is also mention that school has just recently let out for summer break, which of course allows the children to run around at that time of day. The location of the town square is put into perspective, â€Å"between the post office and the bank† (255). This picture for the reader shows what a small town this is, since everything is in the center or near the center of the town square. This is a key point because the town square is the location for the remaining part of the story. The town square is an important location for the setting since the ending of the story takes place here. The comfortable atmosphere remains while the residents of the town are introduced. First the children are described as assembling an... Free Essays on The Lottery The lottery begins happily: clear and sunny, with [the] fresh warmth of a full- summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green" (Jackson 1948: 674). Such a beginning lures the unwary reader into a comfortable lull. The villagers are ordinary people in an ordinary town. Pleasant, friendly and simple, the men talk about ,,tractors and taxes"(ebd.) while the boys run around piling up stones. It begins as the perfect day to be alive. The setting set forth by Shirley Jackson in the beginning of ,,The Lottery" creates a mood of peacefulness and tranquillity. This setting creates an image in the mind of the reader of a typical town on a normal summer day. With the very first words Jackson begins to establish her plot`s environment. To begin, she tells the reader what time of day and what time of year the story takes place. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a typical day it is in this small town. The time of day is set in the morning and the time of year is early summer. She also mentions that school has just recently let out for summer break, which of course allows the children to run around at that time of day. The town is one of any normal rural community. Furthermore, she describes the grass as ,,richly green" and that ,,the flowers were blooming profusely"(ebd.). These descriptions of the surroundings give the reader a serene felling about the town. Also, this makes the reader feel comfortable about it as if there was nothing wrong in this quaint town. Jackson puts in perspective the location of the square ,,between the post office and the bank" (ebd.). This visualizes for the reader what a small town this is, since everything seems to be centralized at or near the town square. This is also key in that the town square is the location for the remaining part of the story. The town square is an important location for the setting since the ending of the story will take place there. ...