Traditions are beliefs passed down from generation to the next. Customs are not made to be followed and instead, are guidance to help lead your path. In Jackson’s “The Lottery'', the villagers of a town follow the tradition of stoning a randomly chosen resident every June. Why did these 300 people decide to continue a tradition seen as immoral by the public eye? Near the middle of “The Lottery”, Old Man Warner tells us about the benefits of the lottery. When discussing with Mr. Adams, Old Man Warner says, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon’” implying that the villagers associate the lottery with a positive connotation (Jackson 32). Old Man Warner is the oldest resident in the village, meaning that his words hold authority over the opinions of the new generation. When told by a position of power that an event you may see as incorrect does good for your village, your thoughts deter from the actions you previously deemed as wrong. While reading the story, the suggestion of overturning a tradition causes commotion among the villagers. This idea comes up when Jackson writes, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently about making a new box, but no one likes to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box”(Jackson 5). Traditions are sacred, created by ancestors so far back in our bloodline, it's …show more content…
Old Man Warner reminds us of this when speaking about the lottery. Expressing his thoughts on the purge of lotteries, he says “There's always been a lottery,” (Jackson 32). His statement connects to the thought of abandoning comfort. Old Man Warner has been to 77 lotteries, 1 for every year of his life. Growing up, the lottery had been everything he’d known, everything the whole village had known, and the possibility of life without them was unexplored. This notion of the unknown sprouted enough fear that no one has ever argued the virtue of the