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Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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The text, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a very surprising tale to tell about unusual events that happen in a growing village.The lottery, which takes place every year is when all the villagers pick a slip of paper from the black box . The person with the black dot in the corner of their paper which is an indication they will face a not so happy event. They then die a miserable death of being stoned at the hands of their friends and family.At first like any other person would they would argue, but in the end they die in frustration, confusion,and fear. Why do they do this? They only wonder that when they win the “Lottery’’ .They might have many reasons to carry on the lottery .The villagers don’t seem to know the purpose , but they remember some concepts such as using stones in order to kill the person. The purpose of the lottery would be a custom to grow food then turned into a tradition overtime. …show more content…

This evidence supports my claim by stating that they didn’t want to disturb the tradition. They might have thought that if they change the box it might change it in an unfair way.Which makes it worse than it should be.In fact, they also mention that box has been here for a very long time.There was a story that the present box has been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it , the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here.(p.46,line 78-80)The people might have carried a tradition to do the lottery. It might have not even been called a lottery. Due to changing times they could have called it that to get people excited about it.To summarize , the indication of the villagers not wanting to replace the box in order to respect their

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The lottery is the same idea in that it was a trial and error and has worked for their town, now is essential to keeping the people fed. History helps provide a clear path for the formation of traditions that also help establish social

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Additionally, they feel as though they won't be tormented with some kind of disaster. The last motivation behind why the villagers hold the lottery is on the grounds that it is something they have been carrying out for so long, townspeople have recently made it a meaningless practice. The practice of the lottery is still unknown, but there are many pieces of evidence that

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They also lost the old box now they have a new one. Instead of wood they are using paper. The reason of the lottery is to win or lose.

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The fact that the villagers have been doing the tradition for so long they just do it without a thought. So, revisions had to be made because of the increasing population but the villagers didn't like the idea of changing traditions shown in the quote “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” (page 2 paragraph 1 Jackson). The whole lottery was to keep the whole population under control. Instead of increasing rapidly they want to keep the town under control and be able to have control over the people.

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The box serves as the only true connection to the beginning of the first lottery. Even though the box is worn out and aged, the village people do not want to disrupt the longtime tradition by changing it. The implication of the box in the story, and similar “boxes” today has with society, is that it is not only a significantly esteemed artifact, but simultaneously a significant hindrance to improving ethics as a people. The narrator explains that “The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office. and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there” (Jackson 389).

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The Lottery is a story by Shirley Jackson. It is about a town that has a type of stoning event called the lottery. It is basically like gambling with your life. Each person has to pull out a slip of paper out of a black box. There are enough slips for each member of the town.

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There is the opinion of the man, who organizes the ceremony, Mr. Summer’s own opinion, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villages about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by this black box” (p. 27 l. 1-3). Although he has an essential role in the lottery, Mr. Summers does not seem to appreciate the complete ritual, but for him some parts of it outweighs others, quite like the children’s eagerness to collect stones. The ritual appears hollow then, as if the boxes are interchangeable as long as the outcome remain the same. Almost as if, the meaning disappeared along with the original paraphernalia.

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The Lottery itself represents a primal example of loss of innocence; portrayed through the young boys who gather at the town square to collect rocks for the horrors soon to follow. An illustration of how traditions can lose their true meanings and come to represent violence and warfare. Furthermore, “The Lottery” also represents the decaying characteristics of traditions, as symbolized by the town’s black box, in this case where every year, someone’s name is drawn out of the black box and they are stoned to death, by other members who may or may not end up to be family. Nonetheless, it ends up to be the villagers who

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The tradition of the lottery has been carried out for so long in this village that nobody even knows the reason for its occurring in the first place and nobody questions it. When Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village, is told about other villages giving up the tradition of the lottery, he says that they are, “[A] pack of crazy fools [...]. There [has] always been a lottery [...]” (Jackson, 4). There is no reason why there has always been a lottery except that every year on June 27th, they held the lottery.

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“The Lottery” is a use of irony itself. Usually when hearing lottery, something good comes to mind, which is why the title is very misleading. She creates a lot of suspense while leading up to what actually happens, because in reality something really devastating comes from this tradition. Also, the entire reason the lottery even started was forgotten. However, the villagers did not forget how to use the stones.

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“Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and the roundest stones”(304).The ritual and traditions of the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s story seem to be just as old as the town itself, especially since most of the residents do not recall any of the old rituals, even the Old Man Warner, who is “celebrating" his 77th lottery. This helps illustrate how the people of the village just went on with the lottery without even questioning it. Like during the shock testing in Lessing experiments. The subjects blindly followed orders to obtain information even if it meant killing the person. Even in today’s society we are in social groups that define who we are and we do whatever we can to conform to

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The characters’ behaviors don’t exactly scream “I love the lottery!” The most logical reason for doing something that makes them unhappy is they are doing it as a tradition. But why not break the tradition? After digging a little deeper, it is easy to see that the lottery has been going on for a long time: “There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here (p. 16, lines 78-82).” Since the original black box was made when the village first settled, the lottery is an ancient tradition that is generations old.

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They do not want to follow the other towns that had given up the lottery. The townspeople are apprehensive of transition because of the unknown factors. One of the examples in the story that shows their lack of willingness to change their customs is the battered black box they use for the lottery. It has been stained and the original color of the wood is shown on the side. Every year, Mr. Summers, who manages the lottery suggests to the villagers to get a new box.

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