Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was published in 1948. To start off, The Lottery is a story about a small village with 300 people that have a tradition called “The Lottery”. This Lottery takes place every year on June 27th, so it’s in the summer time. Every family in the town gathers in the morning of June 27th between the post office and the bank (all kids and all elder). Next, when everyone is settled and everyone is there, they begin the drawing. They draw alphabetically by last names. The headmaster of each household or the father, goes up and draws a piece of paper out of the black box. There is one black dot in the box that someone will draw. No one can open the paper until everyone has one. Once everyone has gone people can now open them and find out who has drawn the black dot. To follow up, in the story, Mr. Hutchinson drew the black dot. Joe (the guy who calls the families to come up) collects the black dot and gets blank slips from other families and the ones not needed are let go. After enough slips are collected so each family member gets one, they draw. So Tessie, her husband and all of her kids (the ones that are NOT MARRIED!) go up and draw. She has three kids that are not married yet. They draw youngest to

It’s what they’ve always done. It’s very hard to stop a tradition when you’ve done it for such a long time. When Tessie’s family got drawn she didn’t protest to stop doing The Lottery, but protested to do it again. Also in The Lottery Mr. Adams tried to put in Old Man Warner’s head “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.” Old Man Warner just says “ Pack of crazy fools.” But does Old Man Warner know for sure that this sacrifice for their crops is making their crops grow better because they are doing this lottery? Has anyone recorded crops and looked at the