Tradition Depicted 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

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson. It is about a small farming town, and every June they have a lottery. The lottery is held by Mr. Summers, the head of the coal company. Mr. Summers has one card for each person in the town. He places a black dot on one of them. He puts them in a black box. Whoever chooses the black dotted card will get stoned. First the heads of families choose, then everyone else. The people who chose the black dot were Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson. At the end they were starting to get stoned. This is why you shouldn’t follow traditions or leaders blindly.

    "The Lottery," a short story written by Shirley Jackson, is a tale about a disturbing social practice.  The setting takes place in a small village consisting of about three hundred denizens.  On June twenty-seventh of every year, the members of this traditional community hold a village-wide lottery in which everyone is expected to participate.  Throughout the story, the reader gets an odd feeling regarding the residents and their annual practice.  Not until the end does he or she gets to know what the lottery is about.  Thus, from the beginning of the story until almost the end, there is an overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen due to the Jackson's effective

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

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.

1."Girl"-Protagonist: The girl, Antagonist: Mom, Point of View: First Person, Setting: Antigua in the 1980's.

As said by professor of Leadership and Change at Harvard University John P. Kotter," tradition is a very powerful force" (qtd. in AZQuotes). In Shirley Jackson's chilling story "The Lottery", a town celebrates a special custom of stoning people to death every year. Jackson perfectly depicts a possible event that may occur from blindly following tradition without evaluating the purpose or usefulness of it in the first place. Her use of plot that creates twists on innocent or normal encounters, symbolism, and theme entail the reality of blind faith, tradition, and their consequences; in doing so, this story can be used to remind us how we should dwell upon real life in the past, present, and near future for the same actions.

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

Some of the villagers from the lottery share different opinions on whether or not the lottery should be practiced. Sure there are people that feel that the lottery is necessary, to them there isn’t anything wrong with it it’s “tradition.” then you have the people who don’t agree with it who think it’s outdated those who see the wrong. They speak up but not enough. They give their two cents but it is shot down by the elders. They use examples from other surrounding villages who have ended the tradition of the lottery but they are pointed at as “packs of young fools.”

The book The Lottery is a short fictional story that was published 1948 in a magazine called The New Yorker. The Lottery Takes place in a small village (population 300), the date was June 27th, but could be any year, and most likely the present. The Lottery was taken on a warm day, with green grass and blooming flowers. This setting makes the story seem very eerie. With the conflict man vs society it tells that if you blindly follow something, it is dangerous.

The Lottery has a lot of different arguments that can be made but the tradition of the ceremony is a huge factor. In Jackson's story, the townspeople are blind to the profound effect of tradition upon their lives as demonstrated by the tradition, the black box, and old man Warner.

motion. The lottery happens every single year where winner gets stoned to death. The original purpose of the lottery was to sacrifice to the gods for corn. Now, the purpose is to continue lost tradition.

Why is it that a certain custom is loosely passed down from previous generations? We, as human beings, all have a specific routine or ritual that is dearly valued to us, but the reasoning to others is far misunderstood. As time evolves, modifications to traditions develop. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the end of the story was disturbing but interesting at the same time. One can ask many questions about the story once the reading is complete. For me, the story left me confused as why a village would kill one person in a sacrifice to have good crops. Shirley Jackson is a great author but it could be argued that the villagers blindly following tradition is an unfair idea and the villagers continuing this tradition will lead to heartbreak.

In Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery,” the author demonstrates how blindly following popular culture customs, with no regard to their origins, often gives tradition no meaning. For example, the popular practice of giving a diamond engagement ring to one’s significant other when one is proposing actually originated from, arguably, one of the best marketing schemes ever created by a company that was attempting to stay afloat, and more than succeeded in that matter. Moreover, the extremely popular holiday of Halloween, actually originated in Ireland by the Celtics, but most of the Celtic tradition was lost through time and transition. Thirdly, one of the most celebrated holidays, Christmas, contrary to popular belief that Christmas began when Jesus