Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Shirley Jackson made a Fictional Short Story called The Lottery That was published in the year 1948 in The New Yorker magazine. The setting is a small town/village, a farming community, with about 300 people in it. It was a bright, sunny day of June 27th, Lottery day. The flowers were blooming through the rich green grass. Families gathered in the Town Square by the bank and post office, as the children gathered rocks. Younger people were starting to say that other towns around them, gave up the lottery. The older people were very sourer about this, because, this is tradition, calling them fools. Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves were starting to set up the lottery. The lottery goes in steps. Firstly, slips are prepared to go into the black back,

Thirdly, they open the slips, the one who gets the slip with the black dot has to re enter their entire family in the Lottery. One slip of paper for each family member. Nextly, the family draws again. Lastly, whoever in that family gets the slip with the black dot “wins”. This story’s theme throughout the story is power of tradition. Mr. Adams says that people in other towns have given up the lottery, but he was shot down by Mr. Warner. The people of this small village have given up a lot of things about this ritual. They still blindly follow this tradition even though have given up some of the key components in this tradition. In the story Bill Hutchinson is the winner of the first draw. His family has to re draw and Tessie, his wife, get’s the black dot. Tessie starts to complain that it is unfair and, as ritual goes, she gets stoned to death by her family and

These stories both follow the theme of Power of Tradition. In the short story they follow this because they are afraid of failure of the corn not being heavy, most want to stop but, they need the corn to be heavy. In the movie version they follow this by not showing any rebellion. The only person that spoke up was that one guy in the crowd, then he get’s shot down. The rest of the time they just stand there waiting for it to be over. They want the corn to be heavy but they just stand there. They are to afraid of the Power of Tradition so they don’t say anything. The story shows the power of tradition better than the movie. The one guy says “Towns up north have stop the Lottery”, then gets shot down. He doesn’t even try and go “Well, ya know”, he just stops talking, because of power of tradition. He doesn’t want to keep going because some people think the Lottery is ok, he doesn’t want to be the one getting stoned because he voiced his opinion. He just stops talking. He is afraid that the Power of the tradition will triumph, and it did. We as a society need to think before we do. If you think stonings wrong, then don’t do it. There’s this thing that goes off in humans, that if a whole group a people are doing something bad, and getting away with it, why can’t I do that. Nothing's stopping that person from doing it, but they know it’s wrong but they