Outdated Traditions In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

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

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the small village, at first, seems to be lovely, full of tradition, with the townspeople fulfilling their civic duties, but instead this story is bursting with contrast. The expectations that the reader has are increasingly altered. The title of this short story raises hope, for in our society the term “lottery” typically is associated with winning money or other perceived “good” things. Most people associate winning a lottery with luck, yet Jackson twists this notion around and the luck in this village is with each of the losers.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" portrays a small town in which the villagers gather for a yearly lottery. Unlike any normal lottery you wouldn’t want to win this prize. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” the author creates a story packed with Irony, Symbolism, and Dark tone, compacted with a ritualized tradition that makes evil, ultimately signifying how people blindly follow tradition.

Americans day after day live much of their lives following time-honored traditions that are passed down from one generation to another. From simple everyday cooking and raising children, to holidays and other family rituals, tradition plays a significant role on how they go by there everyday lives. In Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," the citizens of a small farming town follow one such tradition. A point is made regarding human nature in relation to tradition. The story begins on a beautiful summer afternoon. The town's citizens are eager, gathering in the town square in order to take part in the yearly lottery. With the story focused around one particular family, the Hutchinsons, who

There are many things that people do every day without questioning why they do them. These are our habits and traditions, and though for the most part they are unimportant they can be a crucial part of our culture and our interactions with each other. Sometimes there are traditions that can cause harm or are morally unacceptable. What should be done in this case? Edmund Burke, a nineteenth century politician and author, argues that it is best to stick with tradition rather than causing dramatic changes in people’s behavior. This is a key component in his argument against the French Revolution in his essay “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” In this essay he argues that the revolution will only lead the

Many cultures have some traditions that challenge human right of freedom and choice that are unjust. “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson describe customs that are harmful to its citizens. In this case, the tradition of the lottery symbolize death. The villagers come together to participate in a lottery conducted by Mr.Summers “Who had time and energy to devote to civic activities”(251). Mr.Summers calls each family and asks to approach a black wooden box where each member of the family picks a slip of paper.

Shirley Jackson's story, The Lottery is about a group of towns people who meet every year on the 27th of June. On this day a stoning takes place, as it washes away the sins of everyone that lived in the village. However, should the tradition of the stoning be changed when it becomes your time?

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 theme of the story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, it is that people fallow tradition to closely. What the people see as harm, to them a tradition game of chance where the unlucky one dies is crude and out of date. The story states " Some places have already quit lotteries." Mr. adams said. " giveing indection that villages around them seeing the horors of it.

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.

“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.

In her short story The Lottery, Shirley Jackson deals with the consequences of traditional practices, especially those rooted in implicit cultural beliefs. The traditional practice of the lottery represents the unwavering cultural beliefs held by the villagers. The opening remarks shows the extent at which the villagers have become indoctrinated into believing the validity of the practice. The description of the lottery paints a systematized and dreary practice which bears little to no emotional response from the villagers. The matter of fact way in which the villages seem to justify the practice bears immense parallel to the various cultural and traditional beliefs and practices held by each and every culture group both in the past and the present.

In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, tells the story of a small town that gathers once a year to do a lottery. This isn’t your typical lottery. In this lottery the winner loses instead of winning. The winner is stoned to death as a part of “tradition”. The town people blindly follow this tradition and are unwilling to change. Tradition is one of the main themes in this story and it should be left alone.