Characters of Jackson’s The Lottery and Frosts Once By The Pacific :: Shirley Jackson Lottery Essays

The Characters of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery and Robert Frosts Once By The PacificThere are many devices within the craft of musical composition that writers use to help them convey their messages. Among these include what characters they use and how they act, what setting they put their characters in, what types of symbols are use, and many others. They can go even farther into each branch with how much information they give us, or how much they make us fill in with our own interpretation or imagination. The writers choice of characters is a important part of the story, for it is these people that tell the story and which we relate it to. The characters descriptions and their actions are what we picture in our minds. Although they need the other devices to complete the story, the authors use of characters can be what makes or breaks the story. There are many different types of characters that writers can use to help them distribute their message. Robert Frost uses nature as a c haracter in his numbers Once By The Pacific, while Shirley Jackson uses the members of a small town to tell her story in The Lottery. While each is different, they both serve their intend purpose - to tell us a story.In Robert Frosts poem, Once By The Pacific, he uses nature as his character. He uses the sea, the beach, skies, the cliffs, and the continent and then gives them human characteristics. I feel that he uses these items because the story he is trying to tell is bigger than life, bigger than what could be described with any mere human or animal. By using the seas, the skies, the shore, the cliffs, and the continent as his characters, Robert Frost gives us an bod of Gods last words having immense power to control the largest forces in the world. He also gives me the image of the clouds being the angry face of God with the two lines, The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, / Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes (Frost 903 lines 5-6). along with his choice and u se of characters, Robert Frost also uses rhyme and rhythm to add to the intensity of his poem.Shirley Jackson takes a different approach with her use of characters in her compact story, The Lottery. While Frost uses nature as his characters to portray immense power, Shirley Jackson uses normal people that you could find in any small town to target us how anyone can be taken in by the power of peer pressure.