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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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