Importance Of Traditions In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Traditions are based all around us. Today’s society has many traditions like family traditions, holiday traditions, southern traditions, and so many more. Although most traditions are harmless, it is not always best to follow tradition. Sometimes following tradition can be dangerous. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” villagers participate in an annual drawing, and the winner gets stoned. The villagers are blind to how cruel and brutal it is because of their commitment to this tradition and to that society. Fear is what is keeping this village from breaking such an act. The fear of actually giving up this tradition and society is what is keeping this brutal act existent. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a perfect example that following tradition

Would you stone your neighborhood to death for the sake of tradition? Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery in 1948 to tell a story about how savage people can be for tradition. The story is about a small town who has a yearly lottery and the winner gets stoned to death by their neighbors. The thought is that if you have a lottery, then you will have good crops that season. This short story tells the tale of poor Tessie Hutchinson who is stoned by her own town, her son helps too. In the short story The Lottery, Shirley Jackson argues that all people, regardless of how civilized they may seem, are capable of great evil by contrasting seemingly pleasant and relatable details of the town with the shocking barbarity of their tradition.

Tradition; it is the back bone of every culture and civilization. It is what keeps the beliefs, philosophies, and activities of societies alive, to be passed down from generation to generation. However not all traditions are practiced with pure intentions.  Some activities become so routine, people don’t know a life outside of them. Societies become so accustomed to “tradition” that they will participate in pastimes without  questioning the ethics or morals of the situation. Ultimately when tradition takes the place of a rationalizing mind the outcome can be incredibly dangerous. The role of tradition is an underlying theme in the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, forcing readers to ask themselves “At what point do

Almost everyone has gone to a funeral before, and they have witnessed their loved ones passing on. For example, when you go to a funeral everything is dim, bitter, and depressing. In “The Lottery” the characters have a drawing of cards on who is going to die. In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses descriptive language to show how the characters won’t change tradition even though it is inhumane.

Everyone has their own way of solving problems; however, ritual is a form that people doing one thing in the same way. It defines as “the prescribed form of conducting a formal secular ceremony.” However if the meaning of ritual is mistaken, the consequence could be unpredictable." The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson gives us a lecture about a tortuous ritual. The story takes place in a small village with 300 citizens, they gather for a yearly lottery which everyone should participate. The story leads to a horrific ending by people forgetting the concept of ritual.

Religious groups encourage and enforce conformity of their social norms and beliefs upon their members. Religious traditions are usually passed on from parent to child at an early age. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson reveals the tradition of the lottery and how all of the villagers conform to the ritual of a human sacrifice. Growing up with an exceptionally religious father I can relate to way of thinking of the villagers that traditions are accepted without questioning.

Traditions typically can be described as noble and based on morality. There are many benefits to following and keeping traditions, and traditions generally survive through generations because they bring a community together and are a proud part of a community’s identity. Through time, traditions and cultural norms change as beliefs change, and sometimes they can stray away from their moral foundations and become dangerous. When this happens, younger, innocent generations are at danger of blindly adopting these toxic traditions.

It is human nature to uphold tradition. Shirley Jackson’s  “The Lottery” display’s the issue with society unquestioning approach to institutions. The shocking tale, which takes place in a fictional unnamed town in America, convey’s the dangers of clinging to tradition and not questioning the the institutions that practice them, and just how common they occur. Accordingly, these dangers manifest in the way the characters of the story accept the process of the lottery, but do not comprehend its purpose, the older generation’s disdainful view of noncompliance with tradition, and the townspeople’s callous demeanor in stoning Mrs. Hutchinson.

Many people have traditions that they hold dear to their hearts. Like putting up a Christmas tree or carving a jack-o-lantern. But what happens when a tradition is not morally correct and is followed blindly by generation after generation? In Shirley Jackson's, "The Lottery" a village's ritual is depicted. Every year a tradition is performed called 'the lottery'.

Tradition is an answer to how peoples live their lives. For many it is a social norm, how they have lived culturally for several generations. Despite the significance of tradition in many societies, it’ can still be very harmful to the people involved. Tradition doesn’t necessarily have to have a positive feature for many folks. In the end tradition could cause more harm than it is meant for good. Thus it is really important to change traditional values of communities to improve the quality of life for many people. In the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez tradition can be shown to be very submissive, that is stopping people from making any changes in ending harmful traditional

In the short, dark but surprisingly twisty story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the townspeople have a lottery to decide who will bear the sins of the town or rather who will be the scapegoat of the town. Numerous times it was mentioned in the story that tradition is why the sacrifice kept going throughout the years. Traditions are a set of custom, rituals and/or belief passed from generation to generation, believed if done right will change the outcome of certain situations. In “The Lottery” their ritual is to once a year have drawing to pick a member a chosen family to undergo death by stoning. Even though they are doing something wicked for the good of the whole town, it still doesn’t feel right to most of the residents. Because

The villagers in Jackson’s The Lottery may have found some of the rituals of the tradition irrelevant and either absolutely rejected them or let them lapse completely. The villagers have continued an annual tradition without keeping, knowing or caring about the rituals. This is shown in two passages in the story, the first being, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box…” (Jackson). The essential fact that the original black box was lost shows that this tradition of the lottery is not as important to them as it was to past generations. The second passage clearly shows that the villagers have slowly over generations grown less devoted to the tradition.

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, it can be very dangerous to follow traditions blindly without knowing about the horrible consequences. When one follows traditions and laws and never questions or seeks to understand the reason for them, the inevitable outcome often brings sorrow. Indeed blind devotion to complying with rules that destroys the human spirit by removing choice, and continuing rituals with dark consequences, and punishing anyone who objects to following tradition. Complying with rules that helps lead to destroying the human spirit is dangerous because individuals should always have the choice to follow those rules. The blind devotion of the village participating in the town’s yearly lottery is the clear example why all rules aren’t always positive. Rituals can be looked upon as positive but they also can have a negative connotation when they lead to dangerous consequences. The village in the story has a ritual every year to hold a lottery, where the winner is stoned to death and this is a clear example how a ritual can be viewed negatively. Traditions are beliefs passed down between generations of a family or culture. They are things we do by choice because they are enjoyable and meaningful for the people involved. Traditions in the story have a dark side to it because the tradition in this village is to kill one of members of the village using a lottery system. The dark side of “The Lottery”, is substantial with many down falls of

When thinking of traditions, the first few that come to mind are putting up the Christmas tree, going to the fair, and many others. Traditions intertwine between families and others as well, and even nationwide. However, there are some traditions that we are not able to fathom. For example, in “The Lottery”, there is a lottery drawn every year for a good crop season. During this tradition, one person from the community is stoned to death as a sacrifice. Why don’t people question traditions like this?

Shirley Jackson?s insights and observations about society are reflected in her shocking and disturbing short story The Lottery. Jackson reveals two general attitudes in this story: first is the shocking tendency for societies to select a scapegoat and second is the idea that communities are victims of social tradition and rituals.