Rituals In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The short story by Shirley Jackson is very difficult to understand. One day villagers come together in the square town to participate in the lottery to win something. The kids comes first and starts to gathering up stones until their parents come call them to come back. And then the actual lottery starts where somebody is going to win. When picking the lottery the villagers have the ritual where household goes first and then the family members. Lastly, Tessie Hutchinson one of the mothers/ housewives draws a lottery with the black dots. This does not mean anything amazing this means that she is mark to die. Villagers start throwing stones at her and they stone her to death. The Lottery exist because to the old man warner. He believes that sacrificing the lives of people with grow more crops.

Other villages have already stop the lottery. But not this one. Things that we can take away for the story is tradition. The people continue the lottery because it’s a ritual and maybe it leads to growing of better crops. Obviously Tessie Hutchinson is more likely to stone other people is somebody else would’ve gotten the black dot paper but now she argues that the lottery is unfair because she got the paper with the black dots. Things that came in my mind one of them is Motivation. Villagers continue to kill other villagers because they are so proud about their rituals and they don’t want to go against the authority because Villagers are the one who choose it. I think they story is trying to say that you should protest against the authority when authority is wrong. It’s like a democracy. People just go along with other group of