Universal Themes In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Universal Themes: The Lottery A lot of people in the world follow traditions blindly. In the Speculative fiction the Lottery by Shirley Jackson the people in the story follow the tradition of the lottery not realizing the evil of it.The book shows how people do not care who they are hurting as long as the tradition is complete. The book also shows universal themes of Hypocrisy, Irony, Symbolism, and Setting.
The Lottery had a lot of hypocrisy in it. The people in the story choose names out of a black box and the winner gets stoned to death. When Tessie is chosen she says “it isn't fair.” This is hypocrisy because Tessie did not speak up any other year but the year she was chosen. She was throwing the rocks at the people and did not have one objection. The men in the story are hypocrites in the story. They were never stoned because they always picked the names out of the black box. When they were chosen the wife was the one that was stoned to death. Hypocrisy plays a huge part in how the people in the story in how the people follow the tradition of the Lottery blindly.

The first sign of Irony in the story is when you win the lottery you die. Winning is supposed to be a good but you get penalized for it in this society. Mr.Summers a character in the story says “All right folks……….. Let's finish quickly.” He is referring to killing Tessie quickly so he can go home. They are so use to killing people in this Lottery that they act like it's a normal everyday task. This relates to how people follow tradition blindly because the people are so use to killing a person that it isn't a big deal anymore. The kids also think it’s ok to throw rocks at their mothers because that's the only thing they know is right. Irony is all over the Lottery and how people follow traditions