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The Power Of Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

838 Words4 Pages

This is the introduction to the short story called, The Lottery.The Lottery,is a short fictional story published in 1948 and written in the magazine called, The New Yorker. First, it’s about this village that has a very strong tradition where somebody has to sacrifice for the crop, but some younger adults don’t like the tradition and want to give it up. ”Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”. Secondly, the head of the household/husband has to draw a piece of paper out of this black box. After that, they then reveal who “wins” the piece of paper with the black dot on it. Next, if your father/husband “wins”, the entire household then has to draw to see who gets stoned or has to sacrifice. Finally, they reveal who has the black dot after the last and final drawing of The Lottery. Then comes the stoning of the black dot “winner”. …show more content…

To start with, in this story the power of tradition changed everything because nobody knew why they were doing the lottery or who even started it. Nobody ever asked questions and they did what they were told to do. They didn’t ask questions because that’s all they knew, also they knew if they would ask questions they could possibly get themselves killed. They also followed the steps of the lottery in the same way they have always been. If they didn’t, some older people might have gotten angry and didn’t think it went how it should have went. It might not have flown the way they wanted it to flow. In the end,the theme for this short story could be that power of tradition can change how things

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