Mortality And Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The Lottery
Perspective on Mortality and Tradition.
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is nothing less than a powerful story about a society that gathers once per year and holds a lottery. But this is not a lottery with a winner; it is a lottery with a loser. “The Lottery” is a chilling story because it depicts a sense of normalcy among the towns’ people when they randomly decided to kill a neighbor by practically just drawing straws. This story really asks the question, are rituals always a good thing? If rituals are a good or bad thing do we even know why we do it half the time? “The Lottery”, shows us that even though tradition may have been happening for years doesn’t mean that the traditions we choose to follow are beneficial.
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Hutchinson runs to the town square to calmly explain that she forgot what day it was and enthusiastically cracks a joke to Mr. Summers saying, “wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you Joe?” Once everyone in town is there, except a man with a broken leg, the lottery starts and Mr. Summers calls out every family name and the head of each household walks up and grabs a slip of paper. Once everyone has their slip of folded paper the townsfolk continue to open the paper. Soon they find that the family that lost is the Hutchinson’s. Mrs. Hutchinson’s attitude abruptly changes. What was once an enthusiastic tone turns into a plea. She tells Mr. Summers that he rushed Mr. Hutchinson and didn’t give him enough time to choose the paper he wanted. As the second round of the lottery commences, just within the Hutchinson family, Mrs. Hutchinson, upset, keeps claiming it wasn’t fair. Each member of the family took a slip of folded paper from the black box; first the children open theirs to show the crowd that their pieces of paper are blank; then Mr. Hutchinson opened his to reveal that his paper is blank as well. Once everyone realizes that Mrs. Hutchinson is the one who lost the lottery, she fails to show her paper to the crowd and her husband has to go to her and grab the paper out of her hand to show the that she has lost the lottery. As the crowd formed around her she is still begging for her life saying that it wasn’t fair
Someone mentions to him that in the village up north they’re talking of giving up the lottery, but Old-Man-Warner quickly shoots that idea down calling them crazy adding that soon “they’ll be wanting to go back and live in caves”. That statement is interesting because in his mind it uncivilized to stop the lottery. Old-Man-Warner continues to say that there used to be a saying “Lottery in June corn be heavy soon” and he doesn’t think it’ll be worth giving it up to eat “chickweed and acorns”. Even when Mrs. Adams points out “some places have already quit lotteries” Mr. Warner, says in a resolute manner that they’re a “pack of young fools”. Old-Man-Warner is very stuck in his ways, as people even suggest new ideas about stopping the lottery he quickly calls them fools and naïve. It’s clear that he believes that the comfortable lifestyle that they have is because of the lottery and it keeps society progressing, and without it they wouldn’t be in the same place