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Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Why do we celebrate Christmas? Why do we celebrate the Fourth of July? Why do we celebrate certain days? There are multiple answers to this question. But the true question is...why do we celebrate these certain days every year? Tradition. A word that holds so much meaning and power. But what if that power is so strong that people follow tradition blindly? In Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” that is what exactly happened. The people within “The Lottery” have such a strong loyalty to this tradition that they feel no guilt about random persecution, tradition rules over morality, and believe that tradition is tradition, no matter what. In the short story novel “The Lottery”, people within a village participate in a lottery that happens …show more content…

The whole purpose of the lottery was never truly stated but the why this village continues the lottery is because tradition is tradition. That is why Mr. Summers always runs the lottery, the lottery is always drawn from the same black box, the lottery always takes place on June 27th, and the winner is stoned. No matter how cruel this tradition is, as Old Man Warner (a villager) says, “there’s always been a lottery” (Jackson 375). Just like how there's always been a mingi in Ethiopian culture. According to the article, “Is the tide turning against the killing of ‘cursed’ infants in Ethiopia” the author, Matthew D. LaPlante, states that a mingi is “cursed, according to their [the ethiopians] ancient superstitions” (2). The way the Ethiopians determine if a child is cursed is if the child is born of physical deformities, the birth is illegitimate, and other superstitions. If a mingi is born, the way to fix the mingi is to kill it, why? Because it is tradition to kill a mingi in Ethiopian culture. Just like in “The Lottery”, why was Mrs. Hutchinson stoned? Because tradition is tradition now matter what the circumstances

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Most people know the lottery as a contest to win money. But in the short story, “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, the lottery is not a simple game competing for money. In this small village’s version of the lottery, everyone must draw out of a box, and if their family is chosen then the whole family must redraw and the death of a member is decided. After the fate is decided, the rest of the village throws stones at him or her until he or she dies. The villages reasoning of this process is they believe it guarantees a plentiful crop season.

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“The Lottery”, a short story written by Shirley Jackson, presents the reader with the negative consequences of following tradition. The story is set in a small town where a ritual called the lottery is taken place in which the “winner” gets killed by the other participants. Since the lottery is part of the town’s traditions, nobody wishes to get rid of it or make any changes to it regardless of its cruelty. For example, the box used for the lottery is in a very bad state and would need to be replaced. However, nobody has taken any further action to find a new box because the old one has been used for a long time and is said to be made of the remains of the one previous to it.

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Through the characters it is shown how they are so blinded by tradition that even though there is no logic behind the ritual they still continue the violent acts. This is demonstrated by only one person in the village knows the original meaning behind the happening of the lottery. The justifications of the characters about why the lottery takes place shows how there is no reason why it should still occur. One character this is demonstrated through is Old Man Warner. In the story Old Man Warner declares, “ ‘There’s always been a lottery’…”(Jackson, 434).

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Imagine a society where killing somebody for the sake of a tradition is acceptable. In the short story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson describes an ordinary village with normal people, but as the story progress the details of their yearly practice known as “the lottery” unravels to be more disturbing. The author subverts the readers’ expiations by persuading the reader into assuming “the lottery” is a ordinary tradition until unusual details and the behavior of the characters come into place. In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson seemingly uses ordinary details about the setting and the townspeople to characterize her theme that although society claims to be civilized, and may appear so, it is inherently barbaric.

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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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