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The Dangers Of Following Traditions In The Lottery And Examination Day By Henry Slesar

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The Dangers of Following Traditions Blindly Why do people follow authorities and traditions blindly without reflecting upon what they are doing? The two short stories, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and Examination Day by Henry Slesar, are perfect examples of societies that don’t question what they are doing because killing a person is rather an uncivilized and barbaric act. People will often be cruel when following traditions, beliefs, religion, or authorities. Thus, in the two short stories The Lottery and Examination Day, the authors are indirectly warning the reader about the dangers of not questioning authorities or traditions, and how we tend to be sheep that simply follow and don’t question. In The Lottery, the characters of the story follow traditional ideas, however they do not inquire about these ideas that are not moral at all. Initially, the people of a small village have a lottery that occurs each year in which the winner ironically doesn’t win money, but wins a ticket to death. The villagers show no sign of excitement, but they are rather demonstrating that an event such as this one is not fun at all. In addition to that, the box is a major symbol in the story. The box is very shabby, demonstrating that they don’t take care of it or fix it. This demonstrates how the villagers don’t really think about changing this cruel and horrible tradition, but they rather keep it the way it is. As previously mentioned, they know that this is not the best tradition a

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