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The Significance Of The Lottery In Today's Society

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How Today’s Society Copycats “The Lottery” “The Lottery” is a political and very eye opening fictional story by Shirley Jackson in 1948. This short fiction is about a village of 300 people who annually hold an event every summer called, “The Lottery”. “The Lottery” is when someone of each family draws a piece of paper from the box for the family. Mr. Summers, the officiant of the lottery, coordinates this event and calls every family name as such. The catch of the event is whoever receives the paper with the dot is chosen to be stoned to death. There’s a sudden twist when a husband of a household draws the paper with black dot, meaning his family is chosen. Ritual of “The Lottery” is for the whole family to draw again. The family draws again, but this time it is the wife and she seems to think the process was unfair and unjust. Read more to find out, do you …show more content…

The overall theme is that people are blinded by dangerous cultures and traditions and blindly follow them. Since the “The Lottery” is annual and has been a tradition for years causing the people of the village to think nothing of it. One thing that symbolizes the theme is “Old Man Warner”. A quote to make the previous statement more valid is, “... the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.” (The Lottery /Line 5) This creates questions. How old is “Old Man Warner”? How old is he for him to be the oldest person in “The Lottery”? Him being the oldest creates the mindset for the readers that these people of this small village have been blindly following this dangerous tradition for a long time. “Old Man Warner” is so unfailing loyal to “The Lottery” itself, that he is afraid the people will be influenced by others not doing “The Lottery” and will refuse to do it. This shows his acceptance of the tradition and how even if innocent people are dying this still was

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Furthermore, many of the characters express their uneasiness with change, as Mr.Warner says, “There has always been a lottery.” This indicates the importance of tradition to the villagers. The Lottery, demonstrates the complex feelings of a community engaging in a ritual event, in which they feel obligated to participate in. They appear to be experiencing a conflict with not breaking tradition with their fear of dying. Throughout this story there are numerous descriptions of characters dealing with anxiety, commitment, hope, and relief.

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This is an interesting concept as it appears that no one in the village, not even the oldest man, has a good reason for when and why the lottery began. This symbol of tradition, Old Man Warner, is designed to show that even the man with the most experience and arguably most knowledge about the tradition, since he has gone through the lottery for 77 years, just blindly follows it because it has always been that way (Jackson 316). We see that even Warner is merely a victim of blind tradition as it is revealed that, “the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago…before Old Man Warner,” showing that even Warner was not around when the tradition began. Warner, the symbol of tradition itself, is used by Jackson to reveal how even the most experienced people can still fall into blindly following established

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“The Lottery” Interpretive Essay “The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts of with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers, the official, holds the lottery. After that, every family draws out of an old black box, and a certain family gets picked. Out of the certain family, one person gets picked as the unlucky “winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery.

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In the story, a few villagers discuss the fact that other villages have recently begun dropping the tradition of the lottery. One villager known as Old Man Warner opposes the idea, insisting that they should keep it just because “there’s always been a lottery”(32). Old Man Warner is shown to support the lottery, with his reason being the sole fact that it has been in practice for so long. He believes that they should keep the lottery just because it has always existed, so much so to the point where he does not question the nature of it and defends it. Additionally, Old Man Warner does not state anything to further support his argument; he merely dismisses the idea of removing the lottery by stating how long it has been in effect for, revealing how he rarely thinks about or questions the tradition.

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In the story, when Mrs. Adams tries to explain to Old Man Warner how other places have quit the tradition of lottery it makes Old Man Warner angry. He expresses, “Nothing but trouble in that”, which is the reflection of how things work in our world (Jackson 7). Old Man Warner being stout about that symbolizes how traditions no matter good or bad are passed on strictly to younger generation by older generation. Human nature is to teach all their beliefs to their children and strictly imply it good or bad. When the younger generation tends to rebel, it often results in disappointment and disagreement among the older generation.

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“The Lottery” is an realism/horror story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about some villagers of a small New England town who follow the tradition of making a lottery every year. When it comes, they like to celebrate it with the correct rules and the correct objects so they can feel more comfortable. Everyone need to take a slip of paper from a small black box, and the paper with a black dot in it means that the family is the winner, then they raffle again; Bill Hutchinson, who was the husband of the protagonist Tessie Hutchinson picked a paper with a black dot in it, that meant that Tessie was the winner of the lottery, then she starts complaining because the drawing was not conducted properly. At the end, the townspeople moved off to a cleared spot outside the town and they begin stoning her to death (Jackson).

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