In the story, “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson tells us a heartbreaking story of a town that murders someone every year as a tradition their village holds. Jackson argues that tradition should not be followed blindly and that blindly following it can lead to the murder of innocent people. She argues this by showing us the different personalities of each character and how they portray the brutality that makes the story. After reading this I found many things similar to how society is today and how many people are randomly victimized and killed for no reason at all.
The tragic story starts off with the town gathering together for what they call “the lottery”. “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours,”.
This tradition has been used for so many years and includes many rituals that the town has just forgotten about. Evidence of this can be found in paragraph one of page two, “ Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations.” (page 2) This comes to show that even though the villagers talk of tradition, ritual, and history, it really just comes down to the unnecessary act of murder. Another tradition used in the story was the black box. This box is filled with handmade slips of paper and choosing the wrong piece of paper results in death. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones”. This portrays to the villagers having fear of change in their own traditions.
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Even though the box is almost in shambles from being used so much, the people have no motivation to fix it. Getting a new box would require a change in their tradition and these townspeople fear any type of change. I think they believe that any small change could result in a domino effect of many other changes of their society. I think the author Shirley is making a point to prove that today in society many people stick to the same thing because they fear the idea of losing something important to them rather than believing they might grow bigger and better as people. The last part of that quotes that says “ they still remembered to use stones” relates back again to murder being the main gruesome act going on in this tradition.
As this tradition goes on it becomes a habit for everyone in the town. These townspeople grow up doing it every year without even batting an eye at the fact that they are murdering someone of their own. The children in the town are vulnerable and will follow the rules of society and watch the adults and people around them. This part from the story shows the role the children play in the lottery, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix– the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”–eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.” Seeing these children casually pick up these stones for murder shows how innocent they are to the fact that they will take place in a murder. Growing up thinking this is a normal thing for everyone keeps the tradition strong.
When they were drawing the slips of paper people were mentioning how other towns were getting rid of the lottery. This drew some tension between people and Old Man Warner. He believes that this tradition holds the town together. He went on to say, “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.” Being the oldest man in town, Warner has been apart of 77 lotteries and is one of the biggest advocates for it. He supports it every year and leads others too as well. Shirley has him believe that this tradition keeps the town alive and any change would lead the village to disaster.
Another character, Mr. Summers, holds a lot of power of the town and is in complete control of the lottery. He is the guy who makes the slips of paper to be drawn out of the black box and determine death. The people lookup to him and put faith in his decision to carry this tradition on every year. “All right, folks.” Mr. Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly.” This quote perfectly describes Mr. Summers personality and scary leadership. He’s carelessly rushing into the murder of someone in his town with his power.
As the lottery is starting to wrap up, a character named Tessie Hutchinson arrives to the ritual late. Jackson made her character seem as a sort of outcast from the other people in the town. When tessie arrived late she claimed she forgot what day it was. This was very frowned upon by the town because everyone else always showed up on time and always knew when the lottery was. This shows us how Tessie is very uninterested in the lottery and wants no part in it. Jackson wanted to make her character free-spirited and with that she is the only person to rebel against the lottery. Ironically, Tessie was the one who got the black dot on her slip of paper.
“Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.” I think Jackson wanted to show that these deaths caused excitement in the crowds, when it should be showing sadness and concern. These townspeople seem to be unaffected by what’s actually going on here.
As Tessie was being chosen to be killed she was yelling, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” In this part Jackson was showing her strong emotions toward this tradition and how messed up she thought it was. Her younger son was even given a stone to throw at his own mother. “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles” This part in the story gives a strong example of how societies today can murder innocent people for the wrong reasons. In reality, people are killed everyday without a reason why it happened. Everywhere around the world people are murdered because of race, gender, etc, all things that are random. These villagers participate in a tradition because it is what is expected of them by society.
