The Lottery, is an outdated act of tradition that involves ancient rituals that is wrongfully pointless followed by the towns people. “The Lottery” is an unforgettable short story by Sherly Jackson, Jackson who uses the black box, small slips of paper, the people in charge, and the stones to demonstrate that the original tradition does not exist anymore. The morning of June 27th at ten o’clock the town people gathered between the post office and the bank to attend the annual lottery. The town people always followed this “tradition” but on the contrary it was an obligation to attend the annual event.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, instead, describes a corrupted community where villagers conform to their cruel tradition blindly, leading to a villager, Tessie Hutchinson’s death. The villagers are selfish and careless, attributing to their deep faith to their murderous tradition - the lottery. The annual lottery is a system that eliminates one villager each year by drawing from a black box. The villagers along with her husband betray Tessie Hutchinson who claims the drawing is unfair and asks for a redraw. Tessie, however, is never forgiven in the lottery and forced to be murdered horrifyingly by the crowd.
When a person experiences a one thing enough time, eventually, they will become desensitize to it. People can become used to inhumane things such as death and murder if it is entrenched sufficiently into their lives. For instance, in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the tradition of a community brutally murders a member of their town due to an insensible tradition, when the victims challenge the morality of the ritual, the community shows no remorse including her victim husband, dehumanizing the
The Graceless Tradition Each year, murder is committed and supported by the villagers as part of an uncivilized tradition. The inhabitants of the village watch in suspense as their family members make their way to the stage, unaware that the lottery could pick any one of them. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson uses archetypal symbols to highlight the barbaric nature of society when people follow and outdated tradition. Jackson uses various archetypal patterns to highlight the significance of the symbols. Firstly, the lottery serves as an archaic tradition, and the black box represents a ritual with death as the outcome.
Shirley Jackson's 'the lottery' demonstrates the dangers of traditions because the villagers' actions highlight the harmful consequences of following a tradition without understanding its purpose. The tradition of the village was to sacrifice someone from the village to be able to get good crops the next year. In danger of tradition there traditions were passed down but they where wrong they did it because they saw there mother do it. In the story 'The Lottery' the small village was a village with a very weird tradition.
Most people do not think of small towns to be safe and very calm, but this is not the case sometimes. Shirley Jackson in her time wrote a story about a town doing something terrible. Which then became controversial with one of the most hated stories of its time. Although it was a hated story, it shed light on small towns everywhere, and people thought that just maybe a small town can be as dangerous as Jackson depicted it. “The Lottery” was the title, and as said, very controversial in its wake.
Why does an individual follow a blind tradition in hopes of achieving “sameness” with the public eye or society? One is unconsciously trained to follow mindless tradition without knowing what it’s deeper meaning is. “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, represents a long lost sacrifice ritual, now morphed into a blind tradition that people follow. A fictional village struggles with this concept, holding a voluntary “lottery” every year, where the “winner” is stoned to death. The villagers hold the lottery because they believe that the crops will be bountiful in the event that they do as such.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story that explores the lottery tradition a small village practiced for generations. Throughout the years of the village performing the lottery ritual, misconceptions of how to accurately enact the lottery arose. The original box and wooden chips were replaced with a new box and paper while the tradition of singing was completely lost. (1 Jackson) The villagers questioned whether they should perform the lottery as other villages have already quit the tradition however the oldest man in the village warns if they do not play the lottery it will cause misfortune to their village.
Conformity is a powerful and influential behavior that can drastically affect a society’s circumstances. The morality and wellbeing of the individuals’ in a society are shaped by the everyday traditions and customs of that culture. Shirley Jackson, an award-winning author for her works in horror and mystery, unveils the perturbing effect of conformity on a society and its people in her short story “The Lottery.” In her thought-provoking story, a village situated in a warm area of England prepares to partake in a traditional crop fertility ritual that involves a paper drawing to elect a ‘winner’ who will be stoned to death. The societal conformity to continue this brutal tradition causes the life of a person to be insensitively taken away each
Then when the event starts the author describes how old the tradition is with this passage. “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.” The villagers follow through with this grim tradition every year seemingly just because they've done it every year since before anyone can remember so why stop now? This is the danger of blindly following traditions.
Traditions have been sought after and passed on for generations; with no questions asked, whether humane or not, traditions are hard to break and diminish as they are often what a culture or community stands for. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, a story about the tradition of a small village, is painted in impeccable details of peace, and serenity on a warm summer day, as everyone follows the tradition they have known since a long time ago despite the true intentions and meaning of it forgotten. The Lottery taking place annually is like no other lottery, it paints the true picture of the horror that epitomizes the tradition that none of the villagers dare to question, despite it creating separation between gender and families and ruining
The tradition of the lottery has been carried out for so long in this village that nobody even knows the reason for its occurring in the first place and nobody questions it. When Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village, is told about other villages giving up the tradition of the lottery, he says that they are, “[A] pack of crazy fools [...]. There [has] always been a lottery [...]” (Jackson, 4). There is no reason why there has always been a lottery except that every year on June 27th, they held the lottery.
Shirley Jackson: The Lottery When you think of a tradition what comes to mind? Perhaps it is linked with your family’s core values, beliefs, or has significant meaning. Specifically, traditions are beliefs passed down from generations, they are not declared righteous or sinful, why they were born or still exist. Why do people follow traditions so mindlessly without knowing the purpose of it?
At a time when basic religious beliefs and traditions were being questioned by academia, author Shirley Jackson penned a poignant attack against those who blindly accepted values and traditions in her short story, “The Lottery.” The Lottery is presented as an event that has always occurred throughout the region's history without any opposition. Nonchalantly, the entire village commits homicide at the finale. Finally, aspects of the traditional lottery evolved without notice or were forgotten by the villagers. Within “The Lottery,” author Shirley Jackson embeds the theme of blindly accepting traditions as illustrated by the actions of the villagers.
The villagers on “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson are afraid to let go of their tradition, the lottery. They are concern of unknown consequences that will happen if they change their old customs. So, for every year, the villagers gather at the square to do the lottery at 10 AM . The villagers are afraid to quit their outdated tradition because they think that changing their old customs will only bring trouble.
