Traditions In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

there is quiet conversation between friends. Mr. Summers, who runs the lottery, arrives with a black box. The original box was lost many years ago, even before Old Man Warner, the oldest person in the village, can remember. Each year Mr. Summers suggests that they make a new box, but no one is willing to go against tradition. The people were willing to use slips of paper instead of woodchips as markers, as the village had grown too large for the wood chips to fit in the box. A list of all the families and households in the village is made, and several matters of who will draw for each family are decided. Mr. Summers is sworn in as the official of the lottery in a specific ceremony. Some people remember that there used to be a song and salute as part of the ceremony, but these are no longer performed. Tessie Hutchinson arrives in the square late because she has forgotten what day it was. She joins her husband and children before the lottery can begin. Mr. Summers explains the lottery’s rules: each family will be called up to the box and draw a slip of paper. One of the villagers tells Old Man Warner that the people of a nearby village are thinking about ending the lottery. Old Man Warner laughs at the idea. He believes that giving up the lottery would cause nothing but trouble, and a loss of civilized behavior. A woman responds that some places have already given up the lottery. Everyone finishes drawing, and each

Everyone looked and sounded happy. The music was cheerful, seeming like nothing bad would soon happen. This has an effect on the audience because it shows false security. The town seems normal, then after the first minute or two, things start to happen showing this was far from the case. This technique of normalcy has an impact on the audience because it shows a false sense of security.

In Shirley Jackson’s  “The Lottery”, There is an annual lottery game in this village on June 27th of every year, this lottery is a ritual that has been in the village for long since, everyone in the village would gather at the time square to participate in it. Mr.Sumner, the lottery official will then brings out the black box and declared the lottery open and states all the rules, “Now, I’ll read the names--heads of families first--and the men com out and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?” (BBR 93). One of this papers will have a black spot that is put on by the coal company owner, whoever gets the spotted paper with the black dot wins the lottery and will be stoned to death.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” a town is set on the 27th of June. As the entire town is gathered, even the children, a representative from every household, usually the oldest male, goes up to a black, wooden box and selects a piece of paper at random. Once every household has a slip of paper, the entire village opens their respective slips as a group. Only paper one has a mark on it which signifies that they’ve been chosen. Each member from the chosen family draws another paper slip. The person with the dot on their paper is stoned to death by the entire village. Jackson uses foreshadowing and misdirection to direct the reader’s attention to the detail of the black box which conveys the theme of the power of the mob mentality by giving

    "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

This shows how people are afraid of the people around them simply because they do not know what is out there. They choose not to accept who is in it. And because of that they believe that they live in a terrifying world where they can trust no one. Likely, people shut themselves and everybody out of their lives. “Their findings underscored the cost of diversity: when people have little in common, they tend to avoid each other and to keep to themselves” (40). People don’t put themselves out there to meet new people because they automatically assume that they do not have anything in common. When people accept diversity, they will learn that color does not matter. The town they live in will just keep fading over time making trouble for 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.

A symbol of the lottery's ongoing legacy, the same box has been used for years. It was believed to be made from scraps of the original black box which fell apart through the course of its use. When the citizens are brought the idea that the box should be changed, the whole thing was let to pass. "Mr. Summers," the town's lottery official, "spoke frequently about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much as tradition as was represented by the black box." (Jackson 422) This illustrates the people are blind to the idea of even tampering with their sacred box. They have grown with the tradition and find discomfort in the idea of change. "Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done." (Jackson 422) With the keyword "allowed," it illustrates the people's reaction by ignorance. Every year the suggestion is made, and every year the suggestion is purposely disregarded for the sake that their tradition be unchanged. There is a sense that should the box be changed, so should the lottery and it's purpose. "Some places already quit lotteries," Mrs. Adams said. "Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly, "Pack of young fools." (Jackson 425) This illustrates the beliefs of a majority. Old Man Warner being the oldest man in the town was looked upon

Many things in our own society parallel the villagers’ actions. What do most people do when they see a car accident? They fear it and then they look for carnage; we have to slow down and stare at an accident Not only do we electrocute criminals, we want to watch the executions live on television. Perhaps Jackson received the best example of this aspect of human nature; she claims that most of the letters she received about the lottery "wanted to know where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch" (Friedman 87). People were not shocked into examining their own lives. They wanted to know where they could go see a live stoning.

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.

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

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

At the beginning of the passage, Nancy Hutchinson steps up to take her turn in selecting a paper out of the black box. Immediately, it is apparent that the narrator is telling the story in the third-person and has a high level of knowledge about the characters and event taking place. The narrator is knowledgeable but by no means intrusive. The family members, Nancy, Tessie, and Bill, are described as they grab a folded piece of paper containing their fate. Nancy “took” one “daintily”, Tessie “snatched” it “defiantly”, and Bill simply “reached” in and “felt around” before taking the last one (234). The narrator clearly sees how each person is acting and, in turn, feeling about the lottery. There are a few remarks by the townspeople included. However, there is no commentary or opinion from the narrator

Her parents were afraid of the backpackers…I asked her what they were afraid of” (Orlean). The tone of the quote gives an impression of being panicked and the way the sentences are structured gives the reader an impression that the speaker was traumatized by backpackers coming into the town, by the way the parents reacted. The parents’ enormous fear towards the backpackers illustrates how the community reacted towards the backpackers. Instead of embracing the new culture, the parents locked their houses and never let their children play outside, creating the fear of change in their own children. The negative outlook transformed from the Khao San Road, home of traditions into a place of impermanence.

Shirley Jackson’s use of characters is very detrimental to keeping the theme of the story lively. Whether they play a minor or significant role to the story each character reveals a lot of information about the tradition of the lottery and its intentions, varying from subtle to obvious details. One of the most important characters is Old Man Warner, an elderly man who is very conservative about the preservation of this tradition He holds it dearly to his heart, despite the fact that this tradition is slowly deteriorating in villages around him. Old Man Warner represents the stubborn nature of all the townspeople who are reluctant to