Short Story Review: The Lottery

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

 “The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson in 1948. The story tells about a ritual or tradition that happened annually during summer in a small town in England. The villagers gather together in the square to draw lots in a small box called “the black box”. Mr. Summers runs the lottery with his postmaster, Mr. Graves. Mr. Summers convinced the villagers to replace the original box that made of wooden chips with slips of paper. Some other villages have stopped the lottery, however, Old Man Warner says that giving up the ritual will lead them to return to being primitive. They make a list of the families and the households in the village. There are some rules in the lottery that need to be followed. Mr. Summers will read the names, and the family heads come up and draw a slip of paper. No one should look at the paper until everyone has drawn. The chosen people will have a black dot on its paper. The villages will throw the stones towards the chosen people. Everyone will not care to hear the whining scream as everyone wants to finish the ritual as soon as possible.

The theme for this story is the danger of blindly following tradition. The tradition will lead to a violent murder each year. This tradition is ridiculous as it suggests a dangerous effect and the villagers tend to follow it blindly. As shown in the story, the villagers unaware that of the consequences after drawing names in the black box. The children also, unknowingly the purposes of collecting the stones and bring it to the town square. Because of it has become a tradition, people looks as if it has nothing wrong to do with the ritual. The villagers only think that the tradition is a way to link families and generations. In this story, it emphasizes that the villagers do not really know much about the lottery’s origin but they only want to preserve the tradition. The action of the villagers’ of accepting the tradition blindly and has allowed the ritual murder to become a part of their life. Though the tradition is something being passed down from the early generations, it does not mean that the next generation has the obligation to follow the tradition, thus, it is completely up to the next generation to choose for continuing the tradition or completely reject it (Yildrim, 2014).

Moreover, Old Man Warner also being so firm to the tradition and he fears if the new generation will stop holding the tradition. While those ordinary people, easily follow the summons to kill someone as if they believe they have no reason to object to the order. Nebekker (1974) has stated that despite all these critics that have been discussed in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, there is also in terms of the scapegoat traditions of anthropology and literature, that pointing out its obvious comment on the innate savagery of a man lurking beneath his civilized trappings. No one stops the villagers from doing the ritual murder, and for them, they have no reasons to not to continue the tradition. Thus, the villagers believe more in their tradition over to think that murder is a big offense according to human law.

There is also a symbol in this story which is the black box. The black box is an important significance in this story as it represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogic beliefs of the villagers to it. The black box has become shabby and not in black color anymore because its usage after years, but the villagers are unwilling to replace the new box. This symbolizes that the villagers believe that the antic things should not be changed, same as the tradition that has been doing since their early generations. This is because it is a part of a tradition that no one wants to deviate like the lottery must be put in its place as it is always because that is how it is always been done. However, there are also other lottery traditions that have been changed or forgotten. For example, they use slips of paper to replace the wood chips. Thus, there is no reason for the villagers should be followed to the black box or disloyal to other traditions.

In conclusion, the lottery does not only represent the tradition but also an essential element of the social order. It serves to instill an unconscious fear in the villagers that if they rebel against the social rules, they might be selected in the next lottery. Also, because of the subconscious fear, they do not suggest that their village should give it up on the tradition as their reservation may indicate a vague sense of guilt concerning what they are about to do (Dabek, 2008).