The theme of Tradition change in “The Lottery” and “The Destructors."
Change in traditions is a topic that both Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Graham Greene’s The Destructors. Although written in different historical times and using different settings to pass the messages, the two short stories share a common theme of change. While Greene creates his chief antagonist in T (Trevor), who is determined to destroy the only house that reminisces tradition in London after the bomb attack, Jackson uses the event of a village lottery to indicate the changing society, but barbarism is persisting.
In both stories, the theme of tradition erosion is presented to the audience. The main antagonist in The Destructors, Trevor, is determined to finish the destruction of the traditional London housing started by the bomb which destroyed much of the buildings leaving only one building standing. In The Lottery, the crowd in the lottery cannot remember the chants that accompanied the lottery, neither do they know why one villager had to be sacrificed. Some of the villagers are noted saying that some of the neighboring villages have already abandoned the act. It is clear that the new generation is not as keen as they need to be to be able to carry forward the traditional practices of the elder generations. It is clear that the traditions are fading in the stories, and the young generation is directly liable for the erosion. Another indicator of tradition erosion in The Lottery is where the person selected to die through the lottery acknowledges that it is not justice to die just because of some silly traditions.
The young people in the community who expected by the society to pick traditions and preserve them questions the very reason of having the traditions. Trevor has no regard for the traditional house which is only standing traditional structure in the neighborhood as he is determined to have it destroyed completely. Mrs. Adams indicates that some places are already quitting the lottery, making Old Man Warner retort that quitting the lottery only brings trouble. Warner also states that those quitting the lottery are a “Pack of young fools” (Jackson, 1948). This clearly creates a correlation between the young people quitting the lottery and Trevor, who are all determined to do away with the traditions and have a new beginning.
Despite the youth attempt to break the traditional rules governing their societies, it is hard to be able to break from the chain of traditions. The elders make it seem like the only way the society is to survive is by accepting the traditions passed from generations to generations without questions. Clearly, it was hard enough for Trevor to orchestrate the destruction of Old Misery’s house and burn his house and yet find it appropriate to tell the old man that “it was nothing personal” (Greene, 1954). Despite people from some other villages being able to break away from the tradition of killing innocent people in a senseless lottery, this specific community still holds to it, but they have forgotten more than half of the way the ceremony was initially conducted. Clearly, just like the way London was destroyed first by a bomb before Trevor destroyed the last house, the villagers have forgotten most of the rituals involved in the lottery ceremony, and soon they may stop the ceremony altogether.
While in The Destructors the last assault on the traditions is performed before the need of the story, in The Lottery, the despite reports of the abolishment of the death lottery in other villages, the village on focus still “remembers to throw stones” despite forgetting other traditions surrounding the lottery (Jackson, 1948). In the village, degradation of the traditions seems to be occurring but at a slower pace than London where Trevor already has destroyed the last building bearing the ancient design.
Trevor and his "boys" with whom he plans and executes the destruction of the last old building in the part of London are more strong-willed to change tradition than the society in the lottery (Greene, 1954). Trevor understands the target, which is destroying the past to form a platform for the construction of new future while the villagers in the Lottery still believe that the lottery should happen for the greater good of their society. Despite the lottery being an unjustified killing of an innocent person, the people still hold the tradition blindly.
In conclusion, the theme of degradation of traditions is well represented in the two articles. While Trevor is the agent of change in The Destructors, the it is Mrs. Adams who lets us know that some of the villages around are already doing away with the right while the reaction of Old Man Warner indicates that the young people are the reason behind the change. The danger of following the traditions blindly is shown when Mr. Hutchinson allows the people to stone her wife to death. The senseless killers even “gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles” to stone his mother to death (Jackson, 1948). Trevor on the other hand not only burns Old Misery’s money that he had hidden in the mattress but also destroys his house before telling the man that “it was nothing personal”. The harm posed by the tradition of having an ancient house in London is not as harmful as the bloody lottery of killing by stoning, yet the people go for it.
References
Greene, G. (1954). The destructors. Mankato, MN: Creative Education.
Jackson, S. (1948). The lottery. Mankato, MN: Creative Education.
