The Commander's Duty In 'The Lottery'

Soldiers shouldn’t be punished alongside their commanders in war crimes. Soldiers join the army in order to protect their country. A commander’s duty is to ensure that his soldiers conducted themselves in a civilized manner in an armed conflict. On that principle, it is clear that the main accountability for any criminal act or responsibility during an armed conflict is on the commander(s) for ordering or encouraging soldiers to kill innocent people.
People in The Lottery are like soldiers blindly following a rule that ends up taking innocent lives. Winning the lottery does not in tale a trip to a nice place but it’s a responsibility. This is an analogy to the war because any soldier who enters an army is as if he was entering the lottery. As the villagers in the story ignore Tessie’s protest, they begin to select the stones they are going to use against her without thinking logically or emotionally about their actions. This is because obeying a deep tradition that no one can oppose it even if it’s immoral is a must. Similarly soldiers obey their commanders even though they think that the commands are immoral.
Little by little, Juan became accustomed to the climate of concentration and denouncing other’s rights to be promoted and became absorbed in his work forgetting the noble mission that brought him to the censorship. He was the perfect censor and true patriotic labor. So when his own letter to Mariana reached him he condemned and he couldn’t prevent the government from executing him. Comparing Juan to any soldier who trains hard for battles for a long period of time making him psychologically tuned to the rules and the commands of the army. So once a soldier is in a battle field, he will blindly respect the rules and commands of his commanders as a true patriotic