Short Stories Web Journal
The Life and Work of Shirley Jackson 
By Shayna Schoonover
Shirley Jackson was never pretty. Her mother’s wishful thinking of having a beautiful, smart daughter never came true. Shirley had strong interest in magic, witchcraft, and the occult. Since Shirley didn’t fit in she was treated harshley. Often Shirley wrote of cases where a person has difficulties dealing with things.
Shirley Jackson was born in 1919. She grew up as a child in
Shirley’s mother hoped for a beautiful daughter and Shirley was not. Her mother worried when she married Frank Hyman, a Jewish writer. Shirley was never one to base her love on such things. She had four children, who she took care of during the day, and wrote her stories in her spare time. She was the opposite of what a normal 40’s housewife would have been. Her stories usually were about a troubled woman, with the men in the story being diseased, disabled or dead. The public disliked what she wrote about at the time but lately she’s been making a new scene.
Shirley’s Work
Novels
The Bird’s Nest
The Hangsaman
The Haunting of Hill House
The Road Through the Wall
The Sundial
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Children’s Works
The Bad Children
Famous Sally
The Witchcraft of
9 Magic Wishes
Some Short Stories
After You, My Dear Alphonse
Charles
The Daemon Lover
Little Old Lady
The Lottery
My Life with R.H. Macy
The story by Shirley Jackson that we read in class was, “The Lottery.”
In the story a town gathers in the central square for the annual drawing that goes on every year. People were standing in the square chatting until the time the drawing started. Someone from every family draws a slip of paper out of the old black box that had been used year after year. They were looking for the black dot which indicated a winner. Mrs. Hutchison had to draw the slip of paper for her family because she didn’t have a man to represent her. Mrs. Hutchison drew the slip with the black dot. She was then stoned by the villagers. She screamed protesting but her words made no difference.
The story “The Lottery” is the effect of a town ritual upon a woman. The story is written in third person. The reader’s response to the story we read was shocking. We couldn’t believe that the town had a ritual torturing every year. At the beginning of the story when kids were picking up rocks we thought nothing about it, only that they were being children. To the reader a lottery meant winning money, and we were totally shocked when the winning of the lottery meant you were going to be stoned. The townspeople thought it seemed normal, but to us we know from wrong and d and torturing anyone is wrong. The story came to show how people hold on to things because it’s always been done like that, even if it is wrong or there is a better way to do it.
The short story that I read on my own was a story titled “Charles”. “Charles” was about a boy Laurie. He stared kindergarten and the very first day he started telling his parents about a boy named Charles. Charles would act up in class by throwing chalk, kicking people, telling children to say bad things, and beating up his classmates. Later Charles changed and he started being the teacher’s helper by handing out papers and picking up books and such. Laurie’s parents didn’t think Charles could change like this all of a sudden they didn’t believe that it was real. The PTA meeting was the next week Laurie’s mom wanted to meet Charles’ mother to ask her what happened to Charles. As his mother looked for a woman that might be Charles’ mother she found no one. She approached the teacher telling her how much Laurie liked kindergarten. The teacher commented on how they all like Laurie but he had a little trouble adjusting the first week, but no he was a fine little helper. Laurie’s mother suspected Charles as the influence. Come to find out, there was no Charles in the kindergarten class.
When I read the story Charles it made me think of when I was younger and the kids who acted this way. Also, when I was younger and I didn’t make up fake people. The story did surprise me when I found out Charles did not exist and it was actually Laurie. The story was very easy to read, and I found it in an eighth grade literature text book. This story to me doesn’t reflect Shirley Jackson’s type of writing. But she wrote so much she sure to have a wide range of stories.
The story teaches us that something can be going on and we may not even notice it. The story is told in first person point of view and is told by the mother. The story Charles is the effect of how parents raise their kids upon the kids. It’s written in first person. The problem is Charles who is teaching Laurie all these bad things and Laurie’s parents don’t think that he is ready for kindergarten. Later Charles starts acting better and the family starts showing signs of Charles. The climax is when Laurie’s mother goes to find out who Charles is. This is resolved when she finds out Charles does not exist.
The story “Charles” can be found in the text book Elements of Literature Second Course, published by Holt Rinehart Winston.
1.) In the story Bliss is about Bertha Young. Her husbands name is Harry and they have a baby together they called Little B. The baby has a nanny named Mary. Bertha and Harry were having people come over for dinner. Miss Fulton met Bertha at a club where Bertha fell in love with her because she was beautiful and she had something strange about her. She had the Norman Knights a sound couple, and Eddie Warren are publisher. They ate and talked and laughed together. Face and Bertha went to look at her new coffee machine and then out to look at her flowering tree, they admired how it looked like it was reaching to touch the moon. When Face broth Harry his coffee he said “My dear Mrs. Knight, don’t ask me about my baby. I never see her, I shan’t feel the slightest interest in her until she has a lover.” Then they went along with the evening talking about writing plays and poems. Eventually Bertha realizes she really does love her husband and she desires him. It was the first time she felt this way. THEN when the guests are getting ready to leave Bertha gave Eddie his book, and Harry gave Miss Fulton her coat. When the guests followed each other out Harry and Bertha acted like nothing had went on. Bertha ran to the window and admired her beautiful pear tree.
2.) I didn’t really like this story because I didn’t like the way Katherine Mansfield wrote the dialogue. It was really confusing because you never knew who said what. The story was boring because nothing happened at the dinner. It was weird how Harry and Bertha acted towards each other, they didn’t act like a married couple.
3.) Both stories are focused on how a woman uses a woman used a plant to hide their feelings from people. The object always caught people’s attention, not the way the person was.
4.) The 4th paragraph of the story has Bertha was ‘blissful’ she was overflowing with emotion. It says “But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place- that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to look in the cold mirror – but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something… divine to happen.. that she knew must happen infallibly.” I think all this symbolizes how she feels and it has irony on how she feels about Henry.
5.)The quote “I am too happy-too happy” is ironic because Bertha is not really happy and she means the opposite of what she is saying. This is and example of verbal irony.
6.) At the end of the story I interpreted that the tree is what keeps Bertha happy because of its beauty. I don’t think Henry treats her very good. I think they have people over often and there is always some kind of conflict that happens after. Maybe Henry hurts her physically or emotionally. Whenever she says “Oh, what is going to happen now?” this portrays she expects something.
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Hypotheses of the bird's personality: The phoenix is a bird that is very easy going. Nothing seemed to bother it, no matter what is going on around it could adjust to it and be just fine.
Support 1: "The heating was turned off; but it puffed out its feathers against the cold, and seemed none the worse."
Support 2: "Other birds were put into its cage, birds of peevish and quarrelsome nature. They pecked and chived it; but the phoenix was so civil and amiable that after a day or two they lost their animosity."
Support 3: "Lawks!" cried a woman in the crowd. "He's at it!" -- as the phoenix prepared for its death in front of all these people it was not bothered by them.
My last break up wasn't really because anyone did anything wrong. It was only because sometimes people are only meant to be friends. There wasn't any yelling or violent words or anything. Just two people who were confused and heart break. We were both going in seperate directions and everything just worked out better. We are still friends althought we don't get to talk to often.
On the sunless cloudless day when the family sets off for Florida it seemed nothing could go wrong. The kids were fighting and to stop them Grandmother started to tell stories. She told a story about a house with a secret room and everyon wanted to go except the father. When they got the father to finally decide to go they had to turn back around to go down the dirt road to get to the house. At this point in the story I am thinking that everything is going to go as planned, I wasn't looking for any twist turns. While traveling the road Grandma realizes that she got her states mixed up and they were going down the wrong road. I'm thinking oh no they're going to get lost or stuck.
They end up wrecking and no one really got hurt besides some bangs and bruises and a broken arm. 3 men come down the road and when the get out they don't say anything. I'm thinking these guys might not be here to help since they are acting so odd. For some reason they take them in the woods and Grandma and the misfit are standing there talking and they hear gunshots and they don't really react to them until later. I'm thinking this is crazy! If there were gun shots not to far away I wouldn't be just standing there. Grandma starts saying the misfit is her son why I don't know because that is CRAZY.. and he shoots her 3 times and they throw all the bodies in the woods.. THESE GUYS ARE HORRIBLE!!! I liked the story but all of a sudden and changed and I didn't think this was going to happen at all.
Dramatic Irony- Alan think that all he needs is the potion and we know that he will save up and come back for more.
Situational Irony- Alan thinks that if gets the potion Diane will fall in love with him and he will never need anything else.
Verbal Irony- The man says that the potion is a Glove/Life cleaner and it is really used to kill someone.
Alan goes to a man that he heard has some potion with extraordinary effects. He talks to the man for a while learning about all the different kinds of potion he can get. Some are very expensive and he could never afford them but there is this one, a love potion that is only $1 and he guarantees it to work. Alan will give it to the girl he likes. The girl will love him forever and if she gets mad she will always forgive him. Then Alan leaves and that is the story.
In the story the jilting of Granny Weatherall, Granny is in the hospitol. She is 80 years old and she is getting weak. Her daughter and the doctor are treating her like she is unable to do things. Granny was jilted, or left by George because he stood her up at the alter and her husband John died. She raised her children and did all the housework and farm on her own. Granny had been preparing for death since she was 60, she had her will made for her children. Her daughter hapsy had already died. In the ending Granny is lying on her death bed ahd she is looking at a light and all ofa sudden it almost goes out.
In the story An Occurrence at
The Lottery takes place in a small village. All the people of the town were gathering to the square for the yearly drawing of the lottery. On the way children began to pick up rocks. The paraphenalia for the lottery was a black box that had been used for many years. The heads of the household, the men, came up one by one to draw their luck. When Mrs. Dunbar had to draw for herself beacause her husband couldn't come because of a broken leg she was. When the last person drew everyone opened their papers to see if their paper had the black dot.
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