Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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.

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