Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

On the morning of June 27th, a tiny town of about 300 people, meet in the town square for a tradition they call “the lottery.” The kids come first to the square, straight from school, then come the fathers, and then the mothers after they finish the housework. They all stand waiting as they call the names of all the fathers in the families to the front to pull a wood chip from a black box, and the family with the black dot on their wood chip will participate in “the lottery.” Each member of that family will draw a piece of paper hoping is doesn’t contain a black dot. Whoever gets that specific piece of paper will be stoned to death by the whole town. This intense story comes to life in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” written in 1948. This
These traditions are maintained usually by societies and government’s, and share history, customs, culture, the teaching of language, and sometimes education. Traditions are a part of our society today, and some traditions date back to past generations. Us as individuals may have our own traditions in our own family, usually being annual traditions. Government and city traditions are different that family traditions, in the way that, throughout the years traditions may need to be altered or changed depending on the times, as generation change. However, this doesn’t always happen. “The lottery,” is a tradition in this town that is not even a thought when it comes to change. Some people in the town feel that there was a reason this tradition was started, and it should be continued. It has caused a lot of tension and a lot of ideas on whether or not this tradition should be kept. Many people in the town feel this is a harsh way of exiling someone from the town, and feel it is very
The box is the item that is used for the drawing, which by this point, as old as it is, needs to be remade. “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one like to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box,” (587). Traditions in this town will not be easily let go. This box does need some serious work, but Jackson goes on to say that they just tape it up and it’s ready to go for the next year. Cummings Study presents “This box is used as a symbol to present that this town is stubborn and doesn’t want to give up their traditions, even a simple item is something they can’t get rid of. Everything needs to be the