The Dangers of Traditions

The Lottery, written by Shirley Jackson in 1948 is a story of a seemingly normal town in North America with a peaceful demeanor at its surface; a point that the author makes sure to emphasize in her use of describing the weather and the town in the opening paragraph. It isn't until later in Jackson's story that the darker core of her story comes into play, and it is revealed that the townspeople have a tradition of publicly stoning someone at random, continuing to do so years after neighboring towns had given up the practice. While stories like this are not uncommon in literature throughout the past and have made prominent appearances in the works of Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alice Walker, Jackson's story directly points out the danger in using a scapegoat to justify the means that better ones personal gains.

This was the point I focused on when analyzing and writing about The Lottery for the final essay of this course, as I was familiar with the story and had written about the darker meanings and intentions of it previously. The Lottery is a story that can easily be glossed over and forgotten because it can be read as one person's dark outlook on the world and brushed aside as fictional horror. Those that get past that preconception read into the story's message that we as humans are so blind to follow whatever we are told is true, and will uphold even the most atrocious of traditions because it is all we know.

In analyzing this short story, I found this idea and expanded on it, showing the dangers of blindly following and working for something that could so easily throw you away when it now longer has use for you, stating:

We as a society have bowed down to what we know as the thing that keeps us safe and have given everything we have to it just to ensure that we are not the next to be damned. We in a literal sense are “chained to the rhythm” and always have been, forced to give our all and agree with those in power to avoid being tossed aside like garbage. (Estey, T., 2019).