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Tradition Illustrated In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

529 Words3 Pages

“The Lottery”, a horror story created by Shirley Jackson, is about a moderate sized village that sacrifices innocent villagers in a forsaken lottery for the sake of tradition, and for their belief of good fortune that will arise. This story presents a lot of themes that relate to the real world, and these themes revolve around the negatives of society such as shunning, and forced indoctrination. One theme demonstrated was the theme of tradition versus progress. Tradition is not always right because it prevents society from progressing forward. Shirley Jackson vividly presents that theme through the characters’ malicious actions.
In the beginning of the story, the tale introduces a fresh, summer setting, and a seemingly innocent village, that has sinister lottery behind it. The lottery has been a tradition that the villagers cling to. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody works any more, live hat for a while. Used to be a saying about lottery in June, corn …show more content…

The fact that also the children are indoctrinated to the ritual ever since birth shows how corrupt the tradition really is. Children are supposed to represent innocence, and it is unjustifiably cruel for their purity to be destroyed like that. This conveys a wrong message to the youth and it brainwashes them which can prove detrimental in their life. When a child is only taught how to participate in tradition, especially if it’s wrong, it only makes them ignorant to new ideas and to the world around

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