The Lottery by Shirley Jackson got published in 1948. The story takes place in a small village right in the square of town on June 27th. The author, Shirley Jackson does not use much emotion in writing to show how the act that’s going on is looking at as usual. This story is about a village that has a lottery once a year to choose which people in town should be the sacrificed so that the people will have a full year of growing crops. Shirley Jackson has many messages about human nature in this short story but the most of all, she conveys how cruel and violent people can be to one another by killing others for no good reason. The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of their town fabric. Another very significant message that Shirley conveys is how custom and tradition can hold great power over people. For me, I would say this whole tradition of human sacrifice over a lottery is a crazy and a stupid tradition. Just because something is tradition, doesn’t mean it’s right or healthy.
What bothers me, is that no one speaks up for themselves and telling that doing this whole lottery thing is a bad idea and there is God up in heaven who is not happy for the town people’s action. For example, Shirley Jackson demonstrates how the lottery could make anybody do horrible things to other people, and everyone thinks of it as ordinary.
In The Lottery, the old man Warner states, “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 works anymore, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon. The first thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed, chickweed, and acorns. There's always been a lottery” (4). What the old man was saying, is that through a loss of traditions of the lottery, the people in town have not only become fools but they have lost their wisdom, and they are not very bright. Everyone will go with it because it’s in fact tradition. I would say to go against tradition would be to go against the community, so no one is willing to do that.
The Lottery combines elements of horror, irony, domestic tranquility, and convention in traditions. I feel like the entire process of the lottery is inherently unfair, unjust, unthinkable. Its ritual, formally grounded in longtime culture, not just in the village but elsewhere, and does not mask the mindless evil of the act. I mean, are any justice in a community? What happened, to those times when people are taught to learn how to build a better society? That’s the part that the village people don’t understand, creating a better community is not about strict traditions or human sacrifice, it’s about how you put an effort to make functional changes. For example, you help your neighbors, the fundings, the donations, and to ensure that a community can be a great place to live where everyone can be happy, not full of sacrifice.
Cited:
Https://Sites.middlebury.edu/Individualandthesociety/Files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.Pdf.
I agree with your overall sentiment that the idea of The Lottery is a really terrible foundation to build a community off of. However, I disagree with your statements about the people of this town “blindly” following this tradition for “no good reason.” Sure, to us reading the story, it is easy to say why these people don’t just stop following this tradition? Or ask if they truly believe that killing one person is benefiting their crops. But to these people, who’ve lived this way their entire lives and don’t know anything different, it’s impossible for them to recognize that there is probably a smarter and less fatal option.
ReplyDeleteJared Islas
I think this passage really reflects on mimicry and old traditional values because without the understanding of how the lottery works, they aren't concerned about the consequences of their actions. They do it every year and don't dare to question it even if they are afraid. Human sacrifice is wrong but if these people were led to believe this their entire lives then it must be an acceptable practice. Overall, It is devastating when tradition interferes with health, safety and potentially one's own life. In the end, who has the power to decide whats wrong from right?
ReplyDelete-Sam U
DeleteEvery time...
The town that has the lottery every year isn't just blindly following the orders (until it comes to the stoning of the person), the seems to all understand that it is for the betterment of the society as a whole, but they disagree on the ethics behind it, questioning if they should even still have the tradition. In my anchor class we talked about different ways that societies on islands have survived, one way was to have a Zero Population Growth society, this meant that if someone had a child then someone had to die. They had different ways of doing this, but the tribal society whoever it was, would be a few people or just one and then that person would be sacrificed for the betterment of the whole. While this doesn't justify anything, it just tied into the story really well an shows how archaic this tradition really is.
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ReplyDeleteTraditions in some cases may be outdated and need either abolished or revised after a period of time. In the story “Lottery,” the tradition of sacrifice was definitely extreme. Nothing was nether directly or indirectly proven, as far as human sacrifice is concerned, to be a benefit. Which bring me to religion. . . You stated that the people of the town wasn’t aware or under educated on the belief of god. When beliving in god, one must follow tradition. Perhaps that they were completely oblivious to the existence of god. In parallel, they may have believed that the “Lottery” was their god.
ReplyDelete-Rob D
I completely agree with what you have stated in your post. In the story "Lottery" the tradition of killing of some one in order to get crop and fertile soil sounds very strange and it is something that we are not use to. But what we can see from the story is the sacrifice of someone life for the bettermenet of the other society around them. I wish they could of done it in someother way with out hurting anyone.
ReplyDelete-Weini W.