Tradition 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 less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” (Twain). The Lottery begins during the summer. A small, seemingly normal, town is gathering to throw the annual “Lottery”. In the end, the townspeople—children included—gather around and stone the winner to death, simply because it was tradition. The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective. “I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson). As humans develop as a race, their practices should develop with them. Shirley Jackson develops the

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

To begin with, the villagers do not want to upset this tradition. “...but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (Jackson 1). The people of the village do not want to get rid of this tradition. In the beginning of the story, the people seem okay and they are almost celebrating then things get serious when Mr. Summers comes. The author also says, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (Jackson 4). By inferring, this sentence means that when the people of the village have the lottery (by stoning someone) the corn or maybe crops will be heavy soon. That is another reason that the villagers will not do something about

Andrew Lansley once said “Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behavior, and they are classic excuses.” Most people tend to follow cultural customs because they have grown with them or it has been forced onto them with factors such as parents or their environment. However, is it always right to follow these customs even if they are in fact considered wrong? Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story about the cultural norms of a small community and its annual lottery ritual; a stoning. Jackson overthrows the story by making the lottery a corrupt occurrence rather than a victory. The reader would probably think that the “winner” of the lottery would be benefited but in this case the victory was not so delightful. In her short story “The Lottery” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.

It is sad that misuse of rituals could lead people to death. “The Lottery” illustrates a rural town with small population doing a drawing yearly to pick one person and stone him (her) to death. People follow rituals to remember the elders or being moral; it’s not the way of

Traditions are widespread among many different people and cultures; It is an explanation for acting without thinking. Not all traditions are a good thing, though, and blindly following them can lead to harsh consequences. The villagers in a small town in “The Lottery” gather together annually to participate in this tradition, where one person in the town is randomly chosen in a drawing to be violently stoned to death by citizens. It has been around for seventy-seven years and everyone partakes in it. People always attend, showing the importance of tradition amongst the society. However, in the short story, “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses many literary devices to show that traditions are not always meant to be followed.

"It isn't fair, it isn't right, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her" (Jackson). Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is brimming with illustrations of how thoughtless repetition dilutes foundations that were once rock solid. The traditions of the village in the story lead to the stoning to death of one of the residents on a yearly basis. The people were not so clear as to how, when, or why this took place every year; however, this did not stop them from continuing with an encore. The limited view they had on life and of growth was the road block that prevented any major change. Traditions can overcome society's better judgement.

Stephen L. Carter, an American law professor at Yale University said, “When you shoot someone who is fleeing, it's not self-defense. It's an execution.” In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, townspeople randomly persecute their peers. Victims of the strange tradition are guilty of no transgression other than having drawn a marked slip of paper from a box. The villagers turned against the victim without hesitation; the instant that Tessie Hutchinson chose the marked slip of paper, she lost her identity as a popular housewife and became prey. Tessie’s closest friends and family eagerly participated in the killing with as much enthusiasm as everyone else. Jackson mislead the audience by portraying a false sense of community and proved that

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

Would you blindly follow tradition, even if it's you who finds out the hard way? What if that tradition ment one death to the community, and that one death was you. While this idea of blindly following tradition is shown very while in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Shirley Jackson does a great way of showing that following tradition blindly can lead to something you never would have thought to happen. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the best short story because of the author's attention to details, the great symbolism, and the irony used.

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.

“Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep growing” (Jackson, 2). The town never had an overpopulation issue, there was never a good enough reason to continue the lottery and even less start it for that matter. The social hierarchy of the town did not allow the people to have a voice and that made them feel intimidated. The people were almost programed and expected to accept and carry this unfair tradition; not because of the meaning of it but because they were scared to ask to let it go in results of things getting worse.

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.