The Lottery Evil

The darker action in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is the fact that the winner is stoned to death. The whole town believes in this crazy ritual. They believe a lottery in June means more corn soon. To all the people in the town this is just a normal way of life and no one is brave enough to suggest that the lottery be stopped. Other towns have stopped the lottery and old Man Warner snorts that they are a pack of crazy fools no good will come from them. They will soon want to go back to living in caves, no one working and if we listen to them we will all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. In their minds there has always been a lottery and there is nothing wrong with the lottery and no reason to stop it, after all the Lottery in June means corn will be heavy soon. The Lottery is held every year because of superstition and the fear of the people to change it. No one speaks up or says anything until Tess Hutchinson is the winner and very hypocritically she starts to argue that The Lottery is unfair. She only says this because it is now her that is going to be stoned to death but it was not a problem all the

Perhaps had she spoke up early on many years ago and detested the lottery others would have supported the idea. She could have said that it is unfair to stone someone to death simply because we are too afraid to break superstition and rituals. She could have suggested that instead of the lottery where one person is most definitely going to lose how about we start something new where everyone wins. Instead of gathering to draw names to see which poor soul is going to die, we all pull together and work the fields so that together we grow and produce an overabundance of corn. That way are efforts are placed with good intentions for all and not focused on sacrificing one person for our