The Lottery Jackson

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, initially comes off as a happy and light-hearted story, with imagery showing kids playing in a yard and mothers gossipping with each other. An annual ritual called the lottery. Jackson keeps the reader in the dark as to what takes place in the lottery until the very end of the story. The story suddenly gains a very serious and solemn tone. The head of each household draws a slip of paper, and when Bill Hutchinson draws the paper with the black dot, his wife Tessie begins arguing about the unfairness of his drawing and that he did not have enough time to pick the one that he wanted. At this point, the reader can infer that the winner of the lottery does not win a trip to the Bahamas, rather something that one
Her actions show hypocrisy because, during the beginning of the story, she arrived at the ritual late and made playful banter with the person in charge of the drawing, Mr. Summers. Due to her laid back attitude concerning the lottery, she obviously does not think much of it, and most likely would've participated in the stoning if anyone else had drawn the dotted slip of paper, but when Bill draws the fateful piece of paper, she all of a sudden opposes the lottery. The lottery takes place because, as Old Man Warner says, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,” which tells the reader that they see the lottery as some sort of fertility ritual. Jackson could possibly have made the story as a critique of democracy because while the vast majority agrees with the lottery, that doesn't make it right. Consequently, this leads onto a major theme in the story, tradition. The villagers in the story do the lottery because they believe it will bring good crops and that everyone in the past has done it. However, the villagers cease to truly examine the tradition and see what the cruelty of what they