Wrong And Inappropriated 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 The story reveals how traditions can become outdated and ineffective.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

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” uses specific word choice and specific details about the disparity of certain characters’ action to convey an ominous tone. When the Hutchinson family is up to draw for the death of one of them, Tessie Hutchinson yells, “‘ There’s Don and Eva’...’Make them take their chance’”(Jackson 32). This is significant because Mrs.Hutchinson knows that her daughters are to draw with their husbands but still would rather one of them die than her. This displays that the wickedness that the lottery brings to the villagers to the point where they want to put other members of their family up for death. The author also uses very specific diction, in which she uses words that communicate an ominous tone. For example,

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.

“The Lottery” is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published on June 26, 1948. The story was initially met with negative critical reception due to its violent nature and portrayal of the potentially dangerous nature of human society. It was even banned in some countries. However, “The Lottery” is now widely accepted as a classic American short story and is used in classrooms throughout the country.

The villagers have such an affinity for their gruesome tradition that they resist any attempt to stop it. This becomes apparent when Mrs. Adams says “Some places have already quit lotteries” to which Mr. Warner replies “nothing but trouble

The town has basically allowed ritual murder to take place. No one has spoken out since the lottery started to change things up or get rid of it in whole. One of the key character in the story, Old Man Warner, has been enrolled in the lottery for seventy-seven years, and still has not made one comment about how terrible it is, in fact, he supports the lottery when they are pulling names at the lottery by claiming, “Nothing but trouble in that… Pack of young fools,” (191) when they are discussing how many of the towns have banished the ritual.

Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery is set in a small village who relies deeply on their crops. This story is about a sacrifice that takes place every year in which the heads of households draw for their families in order to see who “wins” and saves the town. The readers grow close to a character named Tessie who decides to speak her mind when it’s too late. In the end, the townsfolk realise that what comes around goes around.

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

It is human nature to uphold tradition. Shirley Jackson’s  “The Lottery” display’s the issue with society unquestioning approach to institutions. The shocking tale, which takes place in a fictional unnamed town in America, convey’s the dangers of clinging to tradition and not questioning the the institutions that practice them, and just how common they occur. Accordingly, these dangers manifest in the way the characters of the story accept the process of the lottery, but do not comprehend its purpose, the older generation’s disdainful view of noncompliance with tradition, and the townspeople’s callous demeanor in stoning Mrs. Hutchinson.

In The Lottery, the townspeople take part in a lottery that chooses one person to kill every year. They believe that what they are doing is right because it is something that they have been doing for generations and generations. They never think twice about it until they are the ones to be killed.

“‘Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?' 'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.' 'What's the catch?' 'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.’” Although this is a quote from Ben Aaronovitch’s Midnight Riot, it relates to this story’s themes of human sacrifice. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a short story where a small village of about 300 people have a lottery held every June, and the winner, whoever draws a slip of paper with a black spot on it, is the person who everyone in the village throws stones at. and the story implies that they are killed. The reason that the village actually has a lottery is because it is a superstitious tradition from a long time ago for human sacrifice to help their crops grow, one which they are too scared to discontinue.

“The Lottery”’: What it means to be Human Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery” answers the question of what it means to be human by revealing just what it is not. She describes it as a “moral allegory revealing the hidden evil of the human soul” (Charters 290). In the story, we see two main points about man, the human inclination to choose a scapegoat and society’s inability to break with traditions even after the reason for the tradition forgotten. This is a story about how people stand by their traditions even when those traditions are questionable.

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

“Every group feels strong, once it has found a scapegoat” (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913). A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for all the faults and corruptions that others have committed. In history, there are lots of scapegoat examples, the most popular being; Jesus Christ and the Jews in the Second World War. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson used persecution and tradition to demonstrate how scapegoating justified unfair killing. Both of these aspects relate to the World War that preceded only a couple years before the story was written. The persecution was blind and done once a year as a tradition that everyone expected to happen.