The Lottery Narrative Report

It was the morning of June 27th, ten years after Tessie Hutchinson was stoned to death. So much had happened during this decade after her death. Horace Dunbar was stoned last year, and Mrs. Graves the year before. The village now consisted of about 500 citizens, and with the village growing every year the lottery became more and more necessary for the town to prosper. But still people doubted the value of the lottery and tried to preclude it. Back when the year Tessie was stoned, the Adams were talking about how other towns were giving up the lottery. Every year there were a larger amount of people opposing the lottery.

The village seems rather uncivilized and immoral in contrast to the modern, Western world. Their ritual stoning of an innocent person shocks the reader and immediately changes our perspective on the village. Jackson doesn’t clarify the purpose of the lottery, but Old Man Warner mentions that there “‘[u]sed to be a saying about “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”’” (Jackson 4). From this saying, we can deduce that the villagers once believed that a

Only when we are introduced to Old Man Warner, the only man in the village old enough to remember some of the traditions, do we get an idea of the purpose of the lottery. It seems to be a pagan harvest ritual, as expressed by his old saying: ??Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon?? (Jackson 369). By participating in the lottery the villages crops will prove to be bountiful. He justifies the use of the lottery simply by stating ?There?s always been a lottery? (Jackson 369).

It was a sunny summer day when all the villagers gathered in the village on June 27th for the annual Lottery. The actual event did not start until later on in the day, so there were little activities that the community members could do to keep them occupied. People would also go around looking for stones and collected them so they will have enough for the event. Mr. Summers is the person who conducted the Lottery. He has no kids so running the Lottery gave him something to do since he had a lot of time on his hands. Therefor he created the Lottery event and that was what he did to keep himself busy. The Lottery is the main reason of the villagers gathering together; at the event all the families from the village gather together to pick a slip of paper from a black box to determine who will get stoned by all the other villagers. In short story "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson demonstrates the dangers of a culture that requires people to participate in traditions that may lead to death.

While reading “The Lottery,” the book was well published and also includes a weird touch of view. The view of this may have been because of what were the people being nominated for. Mr. Summers was unordinary of how he is supposed to name off the people who are chosen. The black box will come into play really odd due to the history. The box had not been specified with much of a description at the beginning of the story until later.

“People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth”, said by Roberto Bolano. There are many different perceptions on the events that occur in “The Lottery”, “The Fun They Had”, and also “Eye of the Beholder.” I feel that in “The Lottery”, Tessie was right for arguing against winning the yearly tradition of the lottery. Margie was right for feeling that the past schools were better in “The Fun They Had”, and Janet was right for contrasting herself from the others in “Eye of the Beholder.” Individuals may distinguish their interpretations on distinct feelings or statements.

In the short story “The lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the lottery is an yearly event, that happens on June 27th. The lottery process starts at ten o'clock in them morning. The ending time is not set, because that depends on the population of the town. All the people are gathered, and are organized by their family. Each family sends a person from their family to take a slip of paper out of the black box; this is usually the male head of the family, but a women can draw in the absence of him. Those papers cannot be opened until every family gets a paper. After family gets their paper, everyone opens their up. If your paper has a black dot on it, then that means you are the “lucky” family. The paper with the black dot is then placed back into the box, along with a white piece of paper for each person in the “lucky” family. Each family member then redraws the slip of paper. Then, each person in the family opens their paper up, and whoever got the piece of paper with the black dot on it, you will be stoned to death.

The description of the rituals show that someone influences the people to chant and praise. This illustrates an otherworldly identification of the leader. Jackson further describes the victim of the lottery as someone who stood before the crowd resembling a divine being. Words such as “duly” and “supposed” provides knowledge that the village practiced and followed the same procedure every year with no other alternatives or any other unrequired arrangements. Similarly, Old Man Warner, when talking about the dangers of discontinuing the lottery, continues, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon’” (Jackson 4). Old Man Warner’s words imply the worship of a higher being, who willingly. sacrifice their own people to a divine individual with the hope that the rest of the year will be successful. This proves that the villagers don’t necessarily understand the real reason for the lottery; they subside because they believe in a higher being who will reward them with a good year. Although Jackson does tie “The Lottery” to a Biblical theme, there lies a greater reason for the twisted ending of her short story.

When the tradition first begun it was said that the lottery would help the town thrive as well as give them good luck. The tradition is also said to give the villages great crops. According to Old Man Warner “lottery in june, crops be heavy soon”(Jackson 540). It was very important for the villagers to uphold the tradition, because it would better the crops. This examples shows how tradition plays an important role on the mindset of people. The townspeople felt that having great crops was more important than the cruel behaviors behind the tradition.

Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, clearly expresses her feelings concerning traditional rituals through her story. It opens the eyes of readers to properly classify and question some of today’s traditions as cruel, and allows room to foretell the outcome of these unusual traditions. “The Lottery” is a short story that records the annual sacrifice ceremony of a fictional small town. It is a detailed narrative of the selection of the person to be sacrificed, a process known to the townspeople as “the lottery”. This selection is extremely rich in symbolism. Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to make readers aware of the pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. There are

Men gather next, followed by the women. The lottery is conducted by Mr. Summers, because he had the time and the energy for the activities of the village. He arrives in the square with the shabby black wooden box. The original black box used for the lottery was lost many years ago; “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much as tradition as was represented by the black box.” (Jackson 140)

In the story there is only one explanation as to why the lottery is used.  This explanation is given by Old Man Warner, who himself has survived seventy six lotteries.  Old Man Warner states, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (77).  According to this, the lottery was used as a ritual to promote a plentiful harvest season.  In all societies the success of agriculture is vital to survival.  Farmers “can only wait and hope” that the harvest season will be successful. From this hope, meaningless rituals are created, even when the ritual has no direct relationship (Griffin 44).  The townspeople would sacrifice one of their citizens in hopes that it would in some way or another affect the results of the harvest.

“…Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery,”(551) Therefore, to accomplish that they had to use the lottery selection process as a means of getting more produce to the nearby villagers by using the lotto as a way to get a sacrificial pawn to participate in the yearly ceremony. Thus, to justify the meaning of the title I would say that it represents the sacrifice of one for the village or in this one for all and this is also a reason why I see the villagers as evil. Another reason would be when the villagers clearly claim that they don‘t want to stop the rituals because it just wouldn’t be right to change something that has been a part of this village for a long time. ("Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said. "Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said

For many years, the townspeople of a small, isolated town had performed a sort of lottery each year. However, the winner of this lottery was never a lucky one as they would be the subject of a stoning. The villagers who would all participate in this stoning had probably been doing this for so long that they had become blinded by what they were accomplishing- which was nothing at all. On a sunny June day Tessie Hutchinson had been chosen as the one person who the entire village would be getting to throw all types of stone at.

Many families have traditions that they follow annually, things like setting up their Christmas tree a couple days after Thanksgiving or having Fourth of July parties. To this village, the lottery is a sacred tradition, something that the village had been built upon by the very first people to settle there. Every year the people in this town participate in a lottery that will bring one of their irfellow villagers to their death. The people continue to participate in the lottery because it is a sacred tradition.