The old man claims that there has always been a lottery and by giving up the lottery the villagers will get in trouble. He doesn’t want to question it seeing that this might cause instability in the entire village. Everyone in the village is so engaged in this matter that they don’t want to question it either. Villagers have grown up with this tradition and it has stayed in their blood, which makes them follow tradition, no matter how big the price they might have to pay. As a result, innocent people die in the name of tradition.
The family member that has chosen the slip of paper with the black dot on it has won the lottery, but the only thing that he or she has won is a cruel and unusual death by stoning. In this story Tessie Hutchinson is the one who wins the lottery. Tradition is an essential element t in any family or town. It sometimes seems as if tradition is the key factor that holds a community together, people bond over similarities such as a common tradition, but what if the very thing that is holding a community together is also destroying its people? Why would a community keep repeating the same mistake year after year and never think twice about why they were doing it in the first place?
However, a person is about to get chosen to get stoned to death. Moreover, the term, lottery, is usually defined as getting chosen in a positive event, ironically, the lottery in the story is seen as a misfortune pick of death. The story also delivers irony through the character, Old Man Warren, while he criticizes the people who quit lotteries “pack of young fools”. Jackson also wrote, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (pg.80) in order to deliver an ironic tone through her role of a narrator. The story also contains several examples of symbolisms.
Shirley Jackson wrote this story to shock her audience. She wanted to show a tradition that is highly corrupted taking place in a small and what seems to be, a normal town. The word, “tradition” means inherited or established customs or actions, In the story, some townsmen are talking about other towns getting rid of their lottery. The Old Man Warner says, “Nothing but trouble in that, pack of young fools.”(Jackson) He is referring to the other villages that have abolished this tradition. He also states that it is the seventy-seventh time he has attended the lottery, as if to say it has been around for a long time and will continue to be around.
Danielle L Allen Professor Shandor English 1101 Textual Analysis of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson The theme of the short story, “The Lottery,” involves a society’s tendency to blindly and randomly persecute others without reason. The village lottery culminates in an annual violent murder; a ritual, which suggests how dangerous tradition can be when followed blindly. Jackson, the author, focuses on the individuals reverence for tradition, writing that the villagers do not really know much about the lottery’s origin, but continue to make every effort to preserve the tradition nevertheless. Leading the reader to understand that a lack of knowledge and understanding, in addition to reverence toward tradition, compel the villagers to continue only what they know, the lottery. Specifically, Jackson writes that the villagers recall there was, at one time, “a recital of some sort,” and that “some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.” (25) These once important procedures were now no more than talk among the villagers, of how the lottery “was originally conducted.” The specific details, lost throughout time, did not prevent the “tradition” from occurring year after year.
The author choses this strategy to conceal the fear and tension the characters experience inside. For the majority of the story, the objective narrator makes the reader believe that the lottery is just a usual one where all the villagers are excited to win it. But near the end of the story, when the winning family is announced the reader can feel through their reaction the fear and tension and realize that something is wrong with this lottery: “Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand” (392). The reader manages to realize the tragedy through actual facts and reactions and not with the help of an omniscient narrator that reveals him the character’s thoughts. This discovery has a huge impact on the reader.
He believes they must carry on this tradition and he never has come to realized how awful it is. Old Man Warner did not show value of human life by putting crops over innocent peoples lives. In “The Lottery,” all of the towns people know each other very well due to their community of only 300. They all respect each other and feel bad for General Zaroff also takes pride in what he does, more than any other characters. He finds no harm in the actions he's choosing to make.
This tradition is unbearably horrific. The villagers’ blind acceptance of the “lottery” has allowed sacramental murder to become part of their town’s fabric. As they have demonstrated, they feel powerless to change, everyone has accepted the fact that this is just how the town is supposed to be run, although there is no one forcing them to keep things the same. Villagers persecute individuals at random, and the victim is guilty of no transgression other than having drawn the wrong slip of paper from a box. The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim.
unknown English 102 Professor 2012 First Person Narrative from "The Lottery" People ain't the way they used to be. I know for a fact that they aren't. I have been around for seventy seven lotteries and have seen the changes that our townspeople have gone through. From fear of death, the great unknown, some of them are wanting to totally remove the lottery, a tradition that has been going on since before I was even born. I know that it seems primitive, I know it seems cannibalistic, but it keeps us sane.
Jackson portrays the idea of a “lottery” in a very mysterious way. The audience is not clear on whether winning the lottery is a good or bad thing until the end of the short story. Winning the lottery results in being stoned to death; this was justified with the excuse that it was “tradition.” In this case the victim ends up being used as a scapegoat, the accusers, the village people, claim that this tradition improves the condition of the crops. An innocent person is being persecuted and the real reasons are being hidden; although the towns people don’t people don’t admit it to themselves, they actually enjoy the stoning. An