Annual June Lottery

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Recommended: Elements of the lottery by Shirley Jackson

The Annual June Lottery Society has followed traditions since the beginning of civilization. With having holidays to man-made habits, society abides to traditions if it contends to what they see as “right”. As told in Shirley Jackson’s short piece, The Lottery, it expresses the idea of long lasting traditions/activities being done amongst people, in this case the annual lottery. Towards the beginning, the reader gets a glimpse of what the annual lottery is, later on readers see how it is performed. The idea of traditions in Jackson’s piece brings up the question, will the lottery die out? Though it may have a horrid end result, the lottery will not die out because of the sole reason that people mindlessly follow traditions that have lasted an extended period of time. In The Lottery, the reader gets introduced to the annual lottery done within the village. Once the story briefly …show more content…

With its aspect of being barbaric however, it still continues in the village. As the reader goes through the story, they get introduced to Old Man Warner, the eldest man of the village who has been in the lottery for over a couple decades. As he was speaking with Mr. Adams, Warner says, “‘Pack of crazy fools….nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves...used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon’...There’s always been a lottery’”(Jackson 4). What Old Man Warner was telling Mr. Adams was that those of the younger generation keep on exceeding more from society, not realizing what they have been given. Also, Warner’s comment shows that there will not be a life without the lottery because it has been around for quite a while. Passing more towards the end, the reader meets the annual lottery winner, Tessie

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