The Lottery, first published in 1948, remains to be one of the most read stories in American literature. The story revolves around a small village in New England where all the members hold a lottery annually and the person picked is murdered. Shirley Jackson’s main aim of writing the tale was to present a strong argument against the rituals and traditions. Similarly, the lottery’s aim was to examine the dangers of following traditions and the accompanying rituals blindly.
Jackson utilized contrasts, which entailed keeping the audience’s expectations at odds with the events of the story, to achieve its direful effect. For instance, the violence presented in the conclusion contrasts sharply with the beautiful setting of flowers “blossoming profusely” and the grass “richly green” highlighted in preceding chapters (Jackson 1). Ideally, The Lottery by Shirley argues that tradition without justification could be fatal, especially when it becomes normalized in society.
The lottery has been in existence for many years with each event concluding with a violent murder. Before the reader gets to know the kind of lottery the villagers are undertaking, they are treated to preparations that appear harmless. The villagers even appointed authoritative figures to lead the ceremony. The figures such as Old Man Warner and Summers rely on the past chaos to demonstrate why rituals are an important means of maintaining law and order.
The children are seen gathering stones in the town square that will be used to shatter another person’s life (Scott 55). The tradition, according to Jackson, is a way of linking families and generations. However, Jacksons seems to question the reverence that people have for rituals. She argues that people have little knowledge about the origin of the lottery, yet they are fully committed to it. “People are willing to use slips of paper instead of woodchips” (Jackson 3). One would easily wonder why the villagers are willing to use a new box but reluctant to modify or abandon the tradition.
The people’s blind acceptance of the lottery has enabled ritual killing to be part of their village. As evidenced in the story, the villagers do not have the power to change or even attempt to transform, yet nobody is coercing them into keeping things the same. For instance, the Old Man Warner is completely faithful to the rituals and worries that the villagers might return to the primitive old days if they fail to hold the lottery.
The most surprising thing, as explicated by Jackson, is that the villagers easily kill someone whenever they are required to. However, Simonetti et al. cautioned in their study that following traditions blindly end up depriving people of their happiness (152). The problem is that those who support such traditions do not stop to consider its consequences. For example, Old Man Warner has participated in the lottery for 77 years and describes those who banish the ritual as “Pack of young fools,” (Jackson 191). In essence, Warner does not find anything terrible with the tradition.
The traditions seem to have lost meaning and following them blindly can make otherwise normal individuals to act abnormally without thinking. The villagers do not have a specific reason for following the tradition apart from the fact that it is held to kill someone. This means that if they take time to assess their actions, they will start questioning why they are killing these people. However, nobody takes time to question the origin of the tradition and why they preserve it. As Nugraha and Sutiono noted in their study, it is good for people to cherish their past, but they must refrain from carrying them as a burden into the future (35).
Unfortunately, as for the villagers, tradition is a reason enough and they have all the justification they want. In fact, the Old Man Warner still believes in primal purpose of the lottery—to improve crop production. This explains why he complains that the lottery “is not the way it used to be—people aint the way they used to be” (Jackson 69). This is a clear indication that the tradition has lost meaning but Warner does not believe in change.
The villagers, as highlighted in the story, treat the lottery with veiled appreciation and courteousness. The mood surrounding the activities portrays feelings of anxiety and anticipation towards the game. In fact, the villagers joke, smile, and engage in small talk, “speaking of planting and rain” before the event starts (Jackson 1). However, deep down the members have underlying feelings of fear towards what the lottery stands for—sacrifice and death for those selected.
The problem is that no one was willing to speak against the tradition. Simonetti et al. argued that people prefer to follow the traditions because challenging them threatens their status and relationships with the community members (153). As a matter of fact, Old Man Warner’s proclamations about why the lottery cannot be banished did not even provoke a counterstatement from other members. He maintains that “there’s always been a lottery” which explains why the ceremony is a force beyond reason (Jackson 263). Interestingly, the villagers secretly like it and does not need to be reminded why they should keep holding the lottery.
The townspeople persecute others randomly just for having selected the wrong piece of paper from the box. The lottery is designed to ensure all the members have equal opportunity of becoming victims, including children. No family is exempted from the ritual—someone new is selected and killed every year. The lottery was completely normalized in the society considering the ease with which the villagers turn against the victim.
For instance, Tessie Hutchison lost her identity the moment she selected the marked paper. Her friends and family were among the first people who participated in killing her. She immediately became invisible to them all in the name of the preserving the tradition. On her part, Tessie was willing to participate every year until her name was drawn, she suddenly claimed that “the lottery isn’t fair (Jackson 300). It is now that Tessie realizes she has been following the tradition without justification, but her fate had already been sealed.
In conclusion, the villagers continue harming each other in the name of following traditions. The people’s actions tend to contrast the significance of tradition as they just depict the negative side of traditions by killing. People such as Old Man Warner are reluctant to change despite the destructive nature of the tradition. He believes that abandoning the ceremonies will amount to trouble and loss of civilization. However, it is important to note that people were not inherently cruel; it is the unthinking adherence to their ritual that primarily caused their cruelty.
Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. The lottery. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Nugraha, Intan Siti, and Sutiono Mahdi. “Transitivity System on Building Character of Mr. Summers in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.” Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics 7.1 (2020): 35-43.
Scott, Linda. “Dark Town: Reimagining dangerous tradition, group ritual and brutal betrayal.” (2019).
Simonetti, I., et al. “When traditions become dangerous: Intestinal perforation from unusual foreign body—Case report and short literature review.” European journal of radiology open 6 (2019): 152-155.