Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

In the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, an annual drawing happens on June 27th. The story “The Lottery” is about a group of villagers who partake in the annual drawing, and at the end the person who essentially “wins” the lottery is stoned to death. The purpose of the lottery is that it is used as an indicator that the harvest is coming. The purpose is also that it is a tradition passed down from their ancestors as a good luck ritual before harvest to get good crops that year. The villagers still carry this tradition because they are afraid of the outcome if they were to break it. In the story, there are several details that back up all of the parts of my claim. One thing that I believe is that one part of the lottery is for an indicator

One of the things that implies that it’s a tradition, is that on page 13, lines 4-10 it says that this happens every year on the same date, June 27th. This may sound irrelevant, however when they said that I automatically knew that it isn't a one time thing that they just happened to do, and they’ve obviously done it enough times to make a routine out of it. Another thing that supports that they've done this several times is the condition of some of the necessities in the lottery. On page 16, lines 70-71, its states that “the original paraphernalia of the lottery was lost long ago.” This makes you infer that they have been doing the lottery for a very long time. An example is when they are talking about the black box, and how it wasn’t exactly in its prime. It said that it had more wood visible than the coating of black paint on the outside. It also said that instead of using wood to draw like they used to, they now use papers because the population is growing each year. This is showing that even though the town is changing, the lottery is primarily staying the same besides the little tweaks. This shows that they are very loyal to their tradition and don’t want to upset