Decision-Making In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Decisions are made constantly, every second of every day. They may be whether to buy a soda or water from the store, or whether to go out with friends and have fun or to stay home and finish the work that has been put off right up to the deadline. All decision making can be broken down into one of two categories, moral and logical. While this works in theory, in practical application, the difference between moral and logical decisions is more of a gradient rather than a line. The point of this essay is not to provide a guide to decisions, nor to give practical advice. Rather, it is to examine the idea of choices, and what the extremes of those entail. Decision making can be broken down into moral choices versus logical ones, with very different processes and outcomes of each; Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” provides an excellent backdrop to highlight it. A moral decision is one that is completely

Over the course of the story, a village holds a lottery each year to find who will be stoned to death. All in the town participate, including young children (Jackson 902). To make a point, consider if the lottery were to not happen one year, a large, scary monster would destroy the whole town, killing everyone one who lives there. This leaves the villagers two options, either they can perform the lottery and stone a single person to death, or they can choose to not play and the entire village will be killed off. The moral choice is to resist the monster and not play. Surely it would lead to the town being destroyed, but it goes against the morals of most to stone another human to death, especially when said human has committed no transgression against another. In contrast, the logical choice would be to continue to perform the lottery each year to save the town from the impending doom. While it is a horrid act, it results in less total suffering compared to the