Blind Ignorance In The Lottery And The Elephant, By Shirley Jackson

Blind ignorance has been a prevalent problem in society throughout all of history, and this problem is shared in the short stories ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson and ‘The Elephant’ by Slawomir Mrozek. Blind ignorance when a person goes along with what they are told or what everyone else is doing, without questioning it, even when people are being harmed. In both stories the author’s are warning the readers of the consequences of allowing ignorance to continue. In ‘The Lottery’, the townspeople continue to murder someone through stoning every June 27 with very little questioning. Those that do question are quickly dismissed and assured that it is tradition and everyone else goes along with the lottery, so there is no reason to question it: “‘They do say,’ Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, ‘that

The entire town follows his lead, blindly ignorant to the murder they are committing each year. The lottery, and the people in the town who go along with it, harms not only the victim but the children of the victim. The children will now have no mother and will have memories of when they essentially murdered their own mother. Blind ignorance has a huge effect on young people “The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.” Davy is the victim’s youngest son who, when they went through the second part of the lottery, was not even old enough to hold his own ballot. But, just minutes later, he is handed pebbles so he can help murder his own mother. It’s not just Davy being given rocks. “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones”. More children are being shown what is happening and going along with it, these kids see gathering up stones to throw at people as normal, as something that just