Benefits Of The Lottery

The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a town’s tradition of ‘the lottery’. It takes place in an ordinary town, but has a tradition of a lottery in which the ‘winner’ gets stoned. Most people in the town want to keep the lottery, as it is tradition and is important to the town’s history. Other lines in the story suggest the town’s people seem like they want to stop it. A lesson the story suggests is tradition is not always a good thing.

Tradition is a large part of life today, but decades ago it was almost a way of life and if it was not followed there were stiff consequences. The story is misleading by the title because of the normal thought of a lottery is something positive or a giveaway. The story is quite the opposite of the common thought. The main point that Jackson shows in “The Lottery” is that people can be involved with such a violent act and think nothing of it. In the story all the people are happy, “they stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.”(Jackson 124). The tradition the village seams at first to be a happy scene, but later learn that it is a terrible event that is a

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that describes a small community and their odd yearly tradition. All the people in the village gather together in the square to participate. This tradition is known as “the lottery” where each and every person in town gets their name entered into a black box with a chance to win. However, winning this lottery means getting stoned to death by people in their own community. Jackson relies on irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism to show the dangers of blindly following tradition.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, is a shorty story about annual lottery drawing that has been a tradition for ages. In the lottery drawing all the town members must participate and the other members of the town then stones the “winner” of the lottery to death. The people of the town participate in this because it has been a tradition over time and no one ever stops to question how wrong this is until they are the one chosen. Tradition to this town is more sacred than human life.

When most people play the lottery today, they think about having wealth. Generally, people who win are happy about it whether they win one dollar or a million. The lottery in our society has grown to support education and it is often worth several million dollars. Usually, the winner of the lottery gains a lot of recognition for the money they win. But what would happen if there was a small town where people held a yearly lottery in which the “winner” was the member of the town who was not sacrificed? This question is answered in Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery.” In reading this story, and reading literary criticism about the story, there were many symbols and much symbolism in this story.

The author speaks to a panel of 6 professionals varying from different backgrounds. The question, do the lottery have an economic benefit, was presented to each panelist. Two members of the panel asserted a positive outlook on the economic benefit of the lottery use of funds in education, public safety, public health to name few examples. Four members of the panel indicated that the lottery is considered a regressive tax on the poor. They strongly suggest that the lottery is not an effective means of revenue for the greater

The town members can no longer remember exactly how the lottery is supposed to be performed, and thus either substitute different actions as part of the ritual, or do away with them altogether.

In a lottery most people are willing to do anything to win, However in one unique town the lottery works a little different. Last week on June, 27th the villagers of Deathstown, Virginia gathered in the time square to hold their annual lottery. The lottery in DeathsTown is very unique to the town because the winner gets stoned to death with rocks. In the lottery the head of each family usually the dad, goes and pulls a piece of paper out of a black box. Then whoever draws the piece of paper on it with a black dot must make their whole family draw from the box. Then each member of the family draws a piece of paper out of the black box and whichever family member draws the piece of paper with the black dot gets killed. Some people might think this harsh but Old Man Warner, a villager of the town said,”The lottery is a necessity and we must keep it to stay civilized.”

The “Lottery” is a horrible example of the influence of an ancient civic ritual of a society, which is so great that it eradicates all forms of cognitive senses of society’s members. The townspeople have accepted human sacrifice as a part of their lives. It has been a tradition for a very long time and the town keeps it

“The Lottery” a short story by Shirley Jackson, features a small town during the time of their lottery. The lottery is an annual event, organized by Mr. Summers. It is a highly important time, as the whole town comes to the town square on the day of the lottery. The guidelines are quite simple: everyone takes a slip of paper out of the symbolic black box, and the slip of paper with the black mark carved on it, is the “lucky winner”. But their definition of the lottery is different一usually, a lottery is a valuable thing to win. But when Tessie Hutchinson, the “lucky winner” gets her reward by getting stoned to death by the rest of the villagers, it is clear that winning this lottery can't be a good affair... So what is the purpose of this lottery? Rather than discontinuing the lottery, the town continues with it because they don't want to upset an old tradition.

Throughout the course of human history, people from a variety of cultures have crafted their own cultural, religious, and familial traditions based on communal beliefs. To this day, people from around the world continue to carry out rituals from hundreds of years ago that their ancestors held to be both beneficial and necessary in maintaining a thriving society. These practices, however, have the potential to be malicious and harmful to society. As one of the most famous short stories in American literature, The Lottery provides the reader with a tale about the practices of a small, fictional town that holds an annual lottery each year. Through Shirley Jackson’s use of irony, symbolism, and setting in The Lottery, I found the main theme to

The village does not want to break away from this tradition. This way of thinking will not get you nowhere. The negative effect of keeping traditions the same is that There are some folks in the town who want the lottery to end, but because of tradition, that is looked at as foolish. " Used to be a saying about "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon." (Jackson)

So, “The Lottery” was a tradition where the head of the household, usually a man, would draw a piece of paper out of the black box; if the paper had a black spot on it the family had to draw a piece of paper each and whomever draws the black dot got stoned. The townspeople didn’t want to participate in the tradition, but at the same time they knew if they didn’t they would probably be outcast if not worse. On top of that, what if the year they didn’t have a sacrifice, the crops failed? No one wants to be the cause of that, so they all just go along with it and are okay until it is them or their family that gets picked. As you can clearly see, no matter what the tradition is, no one wants to go against their family and break traditions.

The Lottery begins like any other day. Clear and sunny skies, flowers blossoming, and green grass. Seemingly nothing out of the ordinary. Then people begin to gather in the town square. What is this lottery that is taking place? Do the people of the town agree with it? These questions can only be answered by exploring the minds of the people in the town.

“Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep growing” (Jackson, 2). The town never had an overpopulation issue, there was never a good enough reason to continue the lottery and even less start it for that matter. The social hierarchy of the town did not allow the people to have a voice and that made them feel intimidated. The people were almost programed and expected to accept and carry this unfair tradition; not because of the meaning of it but because they were scared to ask to let it go in results of things getting worse.