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

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is set in a small town with a population being around 300 people, in this town everyone seems to be familiar and kind towards each other. Each year there is a lottery in this town which is a yearly tradition and everyone is there to participate in it. As all the villagers’ were gathered together, Mr. Summers had finally arrived with the black box to begin the lottery. The box had folded slips of paper inside of it and one of those papers had a black dot on it and to win the lottery you would have to pick that certain paper. The winner of the lottery this year was Tessie Hutchinson and out of no where all the adults and innocent children had ganged up on Mrs. Hutchinson and started to throw stones at her until her death. The author’s tone is what made this short story’s ending so unanticipated and the village had suddenly turned from being quiet and peaceful to completely violent and gruesome. The way everyone including her family had turned on Tessie

Despite the fact that they have yearly stonings, the townspeople are relatively nice. They have many community gatherings that are happy, unlike the lottery. Mr. Summers conducts the lottery along with “the square dances, the teenage club, and Halloween program.” It is very obvious that Mr. Summers, is not a bad man, so he cannot, and should not be blamed for the lottery. The lottery makes all the townspeople look cruel and dehumanizing, but they are not, it is just the lottery that is awful. This goes to show that the people do horrible things even if they are not horrible people. Secondly, all the town does the lottery so that they can have good crops that season. “Lottery in June, corn will be heavy soon.” Good crops lead to good sales

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” (Jackson 4). The lottery has been around for many years and only some villages realize that it is bad. Unlike the village that Old Man Warner is in, they think that the lottery is perfectly fine. “Some places have already quit the lotteries.” Mrs Adams said. (Jackson 4). “Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools” (Jackson 4). Old Man Warner thinks that the lottery is okay, it seems as if he doesn’t care about the villagers in his village, he seems to only care about tradition and the

            Furthermore, this lottery does not arouse the optimistic personalities that lotteries are known for, but rather conveys the apprehensive side of everyone in town and how serious it is to them.  When Mr. Summers cites, "Well now...guess we better get started, get this over with, so we can get back to work," it sounds like this drawing is not going to be as long and as serious, according to his light tone (p.424).  But in response to Mr. Summers, Old Man Warner says, "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody" (p.425).  This indicates that this drawing will be no

In “The Lottery” Old Man Warner warns against not having a lottery. He says that there, “Used to be a saying about Lottery in June, corn will be heavy soon.” He also wishes for things to stay the same, as bad as they might be. In contrast, Mrs. Adams tries talk about the possibility of ending the lottery. Instead of trying to end the lottery, when the stoning of Tessie Hutchinson occurs, Mr. Adams is the head of the crowd.

This starts to foreshadow the end where the villagers start hitting Tessie with the stones with an intent to kill her. Although the end is foreshadowed in the story Jackson does not reveal the true motive of the lottery until the last paragraph when a stone hits Tessie and the reader realizes that whoever wins the lottery is the person that gets stoned to death by the other villagers.

As the stoning process begins, Mr. Summers announces, “'All right folks, let’s finish quickly,'” (p.209). This remark proves that this village does not cherish human life where they will do anything for a successful outcome. This ritual sacrifice is something the younger generations might foresee as something not right or barbaric to do. Mrs. Adams says, “‘some places have already quit lotteries,'” (p. 207). Old Man Warner who has been to 77 lotteries angrily argues, “'There always been a lottery...nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools,'” (p.207). This shows that the young people are wanting to go off the trail and get rid of lottery because they see no good in it. The older generations see the lottery as a tradition that has been practiced for many years, it must keep living

From the outside looking in, Mr. Summers is merely just the conductor of the lottery. He, himself, can too become a victim of the lottery.

The story repeatedly stated that the Lottery has had been a tradition and a tradition ought to remain. Nevertheless, no one mentioned the objective of it and merely performed it routinely. Ironically, the box that obtains the draws and the draw itself has alternated while the “ceremony” remained untouched. It was also pointed out that the black box is actually fraying which represents the antiquated ritual. This symbolizes and the ignorance of people as they see amendments of these objects through time but doesn’t come to the realization of their blindness of following the meaningless lottery. The crowd illustrates ignorance and the mental state of how people count on fluke. They allow this to occur annually as long it is not them that gets drafted. The major issue with this thought is how death would be inevitable if they are one that gets picked since there is always going to be someone that gets picked. And in this case the chosen one, Tessie, bursted out with rage and fear once the grim reaper was petting her on her shoulder which had a black and white contrast with her initial

This is proven when it is said in the story that the other villages have stopped the lottery Old Man Warner says “Nothing but trouble in that,” then he continues to say, “Pack of young fools.” (Jackson 423). After this small interruption the lottery continues as normal. This small comment by Old Man Warner, who claims to have been in the lottery seventy-seven times, strongly points that this village is too proud of their old traditions to abandon its ways. It should also be noted that the village appears extremely judgmental when Mrs. Hutchinson hurries to appear at the lottery she is met by Mrs. Delacroix. After her many excuses such as “Clean forgot what day it was… Thought my old man was out back stacking wood,” (Jackson 421) Mrs. Hutchinson walks to the front of the crowd. While she does this, it is said that there are murmurs in the congregation about her attending after all. When this is said the reader feels doubt and judgment looming in the air. With traditional pride and judgmental villagers, it would definitely be unimaginably embarrassing if a villager proposed to end the lottery and was refused. Perhaps the pride of the villagers is bigger than their perspective of

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a short story that begins in a small town. In this small town, they hold a yearly lottery, but it isn’t your everyday lottery. The winner of this lottery is brutally stoned. On a fine summer day, in the early afternoon, they gather for the drawing. Mr. Summers is the leader of the lottery.

Sometimes when a certain group of people have a tradition, no matter what the tradition is, they follow it. They don’t know how it started or who started it, which is the main reason why that is a tradition. For example, why is turkey the main food at Thanksgiving dinners? Why not other meats like, beef, or lamb? We follow this tradition every year because that's how it's always been.

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, Mrs. Hutchinson’s words at the end of the story, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” are credible. The tradition of this ancient ritual of the lottery in the short story is extremely barbaric. The villagers do not even question the purpose of their actions and continue the sinful decision of stoning the winner of the lottery to death on the 27th day of June each year. The act is so inhumane that even the children of the village and the son of the victim, Davy Hutchinson, participates in the ritual by throwing stones at her. There is no meaning and goal behind the ritual of the lottery, the villagers just blindly obliges the repetitive monotony of unquestioned traditions and practices, meaning

Already, it is clear that the lottery is especially old. Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, proves that the lottery is an old tradition: “‘Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,’ Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. ‘Seventy-seventh time (p.23, lines 280-282) .’” 77 years is a long time for a tradition to be going on. This line of text undoubtedly shows how old the lottery must be if Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town remembers participating in the lottery for 77 years. Another example is on page 16, and lines 93-96: “Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or