Tradition Depicted In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

?The people had done it so many times that they only half-listened to the directions?? The villager?s passiveness towards the lottery shows, not only that they don?t want to be there, but that the lottery is just another task they need to mark off of their to-do lists. In actuality, the lottery is a tuned-way of choosing someone to die, but the villagers are so desensitized to it, that they fancy the lottery as nothing more than an errand that they must complete.

Their quest to hunt and kill the other led to nothing of importance or progression, they became trapped in peril as the force of mother nature became a bigger conflict than their ultimate enemy. In The Lottery the characters are emotionless towards others, they feel no empathy or remorse. As Tessie was put to death the characters remained calm, sort of relieved it wasn’t them on the other side of the pebbles being put to death by the “community” because of a draw. Even Tessie Hutchinson wasn’t one to complain before her fate of being stoned to death had become reality. After it was her who was chosen, she objected the tradition. The villagers are narcissistic and completely oblivious to the transgressive June 27th tradition. This is a direct insight into how people in our real world operate. We only seek action and justice once the problem begins to affect us firsthand. The lack of empathy prevents us from creating an amicable world.

After the first few years it happens, it becomes a tradition, so people will think that is what the town should do. Each year a person dies from this said "tradition" and it could lead to more than just one death a year. Here is a quote from the story, "it isn't fair, it isn't right," this comes from Tessie Hutchinson. She is the women that is about to die from all the rocks thrown at her. Now, her friends might think "oh no!" Her life is gone and so is mine. So she might kill herself. So think about it this way, more people dying or less people

The small village in this short story contains “only about three hundred people” (Jackson 2). Such a small population doesn’t allow for much class stratification; however, the villagers can be divided into four groups. The children who innocently run wild and talk amongst themselves make up the first class. They don’t have much purpose at all during the lottery; in fact, during the first part of the lottery process, Jackson doesn’t even mentioned them. The women who gossip and stand by their husbands make up the second class. Even though they don’t draw during the first part of the lottery (with the exception of Mrs. Dunbar), they provide commentary in the form of gossip such as “[t]ime sure goes fast” (Jackson 3) and “[t]here goes my old man” (Jackson 4). The men who lead their families and act maturely make up the next class. They don't talk much, but have a higher class that of their wives and children. Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves who control the lottery make up the final class. They act as the leaders of the village, while the men act as leaders of their families. This class structure gives the village minor divisions that influence the short story.

The people of the town were so unbendable when it came to their humble tradition that they did not even bother to question the reasoning behind the tradition. All they needed--perhaps all they wanted--was the comforting assurance that it had been around for a long time and would continue to be as long as they lived. People are far less willing to break traditions that have established themselves than traditions that have just begun. It is as if longevity is placed upon a golden pedestal, unable to be touched by the hands of human beings. It is a mandatory fact of human existence that the status quo must be questioned, for the majority of eminent men in centuries past have said or done things which no one will now justify. The villagers should have questioned the beliefs of their town in order to rectify the wrongs of years past.

“Even thought the black box lost its meaning they still remembered to use stones”(Griffin8). The villagers remembered the negative and not the positive in the ritual. The villagers don't think about others just themselves. Griffins statements can be used to state my claim about cruelty behavior. Their main arguments can be used in my essay towards authority and violence. Griffins article talks about how the villagers are being brought down by Old Man Warner and continues the tradition and converting it to violence. Instead of standing up to Warner and protesting that is not right to treat human beings as a form of assumption in sacrifice in order for crop growth to

     "The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box." (Jackson, The Granta... page 63) They are all afraid of getting chosen for the lottery and so instead of standing up for one another and stopping the lottery they just go along with it. At one moment they're laughing together and the next they're stoning one of them to death. The lottery is a symbol of how fear is taught and handed down from generation to generation. People can't stand up to tradition, they're afraid of change. They are afraid to band together and change. No one wants to be the one stoned, but they will stone the one picked.

First off to fully grasp the significance of ritual communication behind the movie, The Village one must first understand what exactly it is. Ritual communication is defined as, “A symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.” (Carey, 1989) The method is dependent on mass forms of

In any situation, it is human nature to seek a source of happiness. The children in the village demonstrate this during the communal gathering. They are inclined to “… gather together quietly for a while before they [break] into boisterous play,” (Jackson) before the lottery begins and oftentimes their parents need to “…[call them] four or five times” (Jackson) before their children “[come] reluctantly” (Jackson). They get lost in their play and have a tendency to forget what they are gathering for. The idea of being surrounded by school friends fills them to the brim with joy which leads

A number of details about the ritual of the lottery show how this meaningless ritual is deeply embedded into the villager’s beliefs. The people of the village, who take on

consider the terrible “crime” of tradition as normal thing. The villagers would get used to

In this story, they keep at one time year tradition, in which they get everyone to meet during carnival season and everyone living in the village has to attend. What I think is wrong with this story is how they kill them and the reason they do it. What they do is basically if you pick a paper with something on it you are immediately surrounded by everyone and they all pick up a rock and throw it at you. Eventually, the person they threw the rocks at dies and everyone goes back to what they were doing

They are laughing, playing, and having fun doing things that children do. Some of the children are gathering stones from the surrounding area and forming piles of them. Soon the men and women arrive, bringing with them a less friendly tone. The villagers make small talk laughing quietly amongst each other while at the same time maintaining a slight seriousness. Jackson makes some use of foreshadowing early in the story by mentioning the pile of stones and the way the older characters distance themselves from it. "They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed" (291). Any observant reader is able to sense that something is not quite right. These suspicions are confirmed come the end of the story when the reader learns that this gathering is part of a sick and twisted ritual in which members of the village draw paper slips from a box to select one member of the village. This person is then used as a scapegoat and is stoned to death to ensure a happy and profitable year for the

It was fertility ritual. Many of them didn’t want to do it. Some of the young people brought out the fact that there were some northern villages that had stop the lottery, but Old Man Warner told them that that was nonsense. That will bring trouble to the village. That was the end of the conversation. There were also some woman that hesitated when they started to throw rock. She clearly didn’t want to participate in the ritual, but there she was pretending to be OK with it.

Here stood a village, an ordinary village, consisting of farms, markets, wells, and a fair amount of houses for its population. It is the Thorpes village. It has everything any other village has, but it is very small, both in size in population. This is strange due to its age, as it’s one of the oldest villages in the area. It has always remained small and always will be due to a savage tradition made by the village’s founder, Amund Thorpes. The tradition states as follows: ‘No two people shall share their day of birth in Thorpes. If this occurs, the village people must decide to sacrifice one of the two.’