The Lottery was a short story written by Shirley Jackson about a small village of around 300 people practicing a tradition or a ritual wherein all families, as initially represented by the heads of their families participate in a lottery. The irony of this, however, is that in modern culture, a lottery has generally been associated with good luck or to be more specific, a big fortune. Winning the lottery has, in modern America, been associated with winning a huge sum of cash after getting the right combination of numbers. In the case of Jackson’s The Lottery however, it is the opposite, mainly because of the slightly different mechanics and the fact that instead of fame and fortune, it is disgrace and torture that the winning family and the chosen individual from a specific family would get, as can be seen in Bill Hutchinson’s family’s fate, specifically that of his wife Tessie . The main theme that the author of this paper wanted to attack was the culture or practice of blind obedience to tradition, a tradition that was designed to keep the town thriving but is full of irregularities and can even be associated with perplexed compliance.
This is based on the fact (more than just the notion) that Jackson really intended to directly confront the logic and rationality behind certain contemporary traditions. It was her main intention to expose the senselessness of the tradition that has long been practiced by some cultures in many countries. Although everyone is given the right to express his thoughts either in speech or in writing, thanks to the provisions made by the constitution, this did not stop people from various countries to see Jackson’s The Lottery as a direct attack to their belief, traditions, and their culture in general.
The part of the tradition being followed by the villagers in the story that violates logic is the part where the chosen family members are practically given the freedom to choose the people that they are going to include in the second round of the lottery. If one can remember, the actual lottery has two rounds. By lunch time on the lottery day, the head of each household in the village was to draw a slip. The person who gets the highly unwanted black slip would be the unlucky family where the tribute would be chosen. The second round of the lottery involves the individual members of the chosen family. They are to draw slips from the slip pool regardless of their age.
According to Coulhard, this tradition basically initiates a person’s survival instinct. This can be evidenced by the fact that Tessie Hutchinson, the person who has been chosen as the winner in that year’s lottery, practically turned on her own flesh and blood. Based on how he put it, Tessie’s survival instinct was pushed to the most shameful level because of her desperate attempt to improve her odds for survival by defying tradition and adding her married daughter to the killing pool, thinking that she would have less chances of being drawn as the winner if all of her family members would be included in the lottery’s second round .
If one is to follow the set of arguments being presented by this person, the tradition that the villagers were following can be seen as a denial to the myth of family love. The family is known as the basic unit of a society. This is something that has been known to man for hundreds of years now, yet in the tradition that Jackson portrayed in the lottery, the villagers’ mindset were practically thinking that the tradition that they were practicing, the one that destroys the essence of family and the existence of family love, mainly because it makes family members turn against each other because of the natural kickoff of a person’s survival instincts, the practice would seem incomprehensible and illogical.
The fact however remains the same—that these rituals indeed occurred at some point in some countries’ history and this is what saddens, surprises, and even angers some people. However, just like in any argument or debate, there are two sides to this one; the first side says that those rituals, despite their inherent lack of explanation, matter and contributed to the growth of man’s culture, development and prosperity; the other side says that those rituals are nothing but a mere product of humans’ imagination and erroneous attempt to make accurate associations, one that costed the lives of a lot of people, as in the case of Tessie in The Lottery. Griffin’s (44-45) argument basically supports the thesis statement of this paper in that it explains why there are certain confusions regarding the origin, rationale, and even sensibility of the sacrificial rituals practiced by men living in previous era.
According to David (01) on the other hand said that “Jackson conveys her cautionary message on tradition by establishing a tension between the brutality of the ritual practice and the fact that it has lost much of its specificity and functionality over the years; indeed, the people had done it so many times they only half-listed to directions” and over the years certain parts of the tradition had been allowed to lapse and had changed with time”. Additionally, David pointed out that even the villagers themselves knew that their sacrificial rituals were senseless and illogical. In the Lottery, they knew that the ritual was nothing but trouble. Surprisingly, however, they still kept on doing this and this basically proves the author of this paper’s initial statement about man’s tendency to follow traditions blindly even if it already violates certain if not all aspects of his intelligence and even existence; even if it already violates the very thing that bonds and unites families and therefore society.
In another literary critique, Nebeker (100) stated that “perhaps the critical ambivalence illustrated above stems from failure to perceive that The Lottery really fuses two stories and themes into one fictional vehicle”. It is important to note, according to Nebeker (100-107) that Jackson does not attack ritual in and of itself but rather implies that as any anthropologist knows, ritual in its origin is integral to man’s concept of his universe, that it is based on his need to rationalize things that are beyond his control and understanding that also at the same time ironically surrounds him.
Gahr (01) supports the idea that the main theme of the Lottery was indeed tradition and humankind’s history of relying on it to satisfy its need to explain and understand things; a method (i.e. traditions) that unfortunately created confusion and perplexity more than concrete explanations, as evidenced by the fact that those rituals and traditions no longer exist today.
In conclusion, all of the reviewed sources and the used evidences so far show that the ritual or tradition that the villagers followed in the Lottery was full of perplexity and confusion as it attempted to dismantle the very bond that puts society together—the family, and that it was only fueled by blind obedience to tradition. Collectively, the reviewed critiques of the Lottery support the idea that men are resistant to change. They have long realized that sacrificial rituals did not make sense and its conduction was not necessarily correlated to the yields they were getting from their lands and crops; yet, they continued to practice them as if they did not know the truth. This was particularly highlighted in David’s (01) work. In the end, Jackson managed to successfully portray the peculiarity in and twistedness of mankind’s use of logic and belief and how it easily becomes overshadowed by blind obedience to tradition.
Works Cited
Coulthard, A. "The Grim View of Human Nature." The Explicator (1990): 226-227.
David, M. "Tradition in The Lottery." McClinton Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature (2011): 01. Web.
Gahr, E. "A Careful Look at "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson." Bright Hub (2012): http://www.brighthubeducation.com/homework-help-literature/123283-a-literary-analysis-of-the-lottery-by-shirley-jackson/. 01. Web.
Griffin, A. "Tradition and Violence." Philadelphia Chelsea House (2001): 44-45. Print.
Jackson, S. "The Lottery." The New Yorker (1948): 01-07. Print.
Nebeker, H. "The Lottery: Symbolic Tour de Force." Contemporary Literary Criticism (1995): 100-107. Print.
