Hypocrisy In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

In the short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the characters face their fates determined by playing in the town’s annual lottery. The main idea of the story is, sometimes in life, you have to take certain chances, regardless if you are blindly taking that chance; however, the natives of the village are willingly taking a chance of death by playing the lottery. There are many different themes in this story; however, I will only focus on the hypocrisy trait that many of the characters show throughout the story. The hypocrisy theme stuck out the most to me in this short story because it seemed to be a lot of back and forth between opinions and loyalties of many of the characters. For example; Mrs. Hutchinson, one of the main characters in the story, started out being nonchalant about the lottery. Initially, she pretends to support

When Mr. Hutchinson was chosen to represent his family, his wife Mrs. Hutchinson, was not happy about it. Although she acts like a supporter of the lottery, in the beginning, she wanted to do a re-vote in order to stop someone in her family from being stoned to death. After casting out the second round of the lottery, every member of the Hutchinson family was given a sheet of paper. This time around Mrs. Hutchinson was the new winner of the lottery. After she realizes that she would be the next victim, she started to make a bigger scene and cursing the lottery. This is one of the main parts where the hypocrisy comes into play within the story. Mrs. Hutchinson did not mind participating in the lottery until she became affected by it. Even when she is making a fuss about the lottery being unfair, her own husband tried to stop her by forcing the piece of paper from her hands in order to get the stoning ceremony over with. He did not take up for her the same way she took up for