The Lottery is a short, fictional story written in 1948 by Shirley Jackson. It was published in a magazine called The New Yorker. It takes place in a small village, on June 27th. The children had just got out of school and were piling up rocks and stones. Throughout the middle of the story, the heads of households draw their slips of paper, open them, and the Hutchinson’s redraw to see who has to face the inevitable. As she waits slowly for death, the fear inside her bubbles and grows. And in the end, after a long and painful stoning, it does eventually come. A central theme throughout this story is power of tradition. People in the short story blindly follow and do certain things because it’s what traditions “says.” It’s dangerous to follow