A Strange Tradition

A Strange Tradition

Many writers choose to incorporate a theme to their story as a guide for the reader. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson writes about a strange tradition as her theme. She also talks about the different elements that represent it and the relationship of the villagers towards this peculiar tradition. In a way, I believe she aims to criticize how people cling to the past and the “old ways” even tough they no longer make sense. This short story is a way to illustrate how sometimes things should change, we should use the past to build a better future, and not try to avoid the present.

This ritual occurs once a year, on June 27th. The villagers will gather in the town’s square to partake in a lottery. At first, all the heads of families draw a piece of paper out of an old black box. One of the pieces of paper contains a black dot, the person who pulls the black dot out of the box and his family must participate in another round to determine who the “winner” of the lottery is. What makes this lottery different from the others is that the final person to draw “… the black spot [which] Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office” is sentenced to be stoned to death by all other inhabitants of the small town to ensure a good harvest for the year (7). “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”, says the Old Man Warner as a reference to this annual human sacrifice promising a poriferous harvest (5). In addition, two main elements of this story portray tradition. Firstly, the old black box that contains the slips. Mr. Summer, the one responsible for the lottery, talks of making a new box from time to time but “no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (2). There was even a story “…that the present box had been made with some of the pieces of the box that had preceded it”. The present black box is older than Old Man Warner, who is the second element. Being the oldest inhabitant of this village, he is the one ensuring that the tradition is perpetrated every year. Finally, the people of this village have a strange love-hate relationship toward the lottery. In fact, throughout the story, we realize that the characters value this tradition, especially Old Man Warner. When it is brought to his attention that some villages have already quit the lottery, he thinks that there is “Nothing but trouble in that” and that they are a “Pack of young fools” (5). Old Man Warner is proud to say that he has been in the lottery for seventy-seven years and that it must continue. Besides, this town is particularly superstitious, everyone seems to think that the human sacrifice concluding the lottery is beneficial to the community. For example, Mrs. Hutchinson “…remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running” implicitly expressing that she has no problem with killing someone that day for the good of the community (3). But all of them are also anxious towards the lottery, each of them “holding the small, folded piece of paper in their large hand turning them over and over nervously”, knowing that they may be the next one to be stoned to death (4). To conclude, the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson has a strange and deadly theme, which is represented by two main elements. Throughout the story, we also notice a strange relationship between this tradition and the people who practice it. It is hard to believe that animal or human sacrifice would still be accepted in our modern society as a way to ensure poriferous harvests.

* This it an essay I wrote in high school, I though I sould share it.