Blindly Following Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Often when thinking about tradition we think of Christmas morning or Passover Seder. But, have you ever wondered how much your traditions have changed since when they were started? The message portrayed in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the dangers of blindly following traditions, and how it affects those participating. The villagers’ in the story give a blind approval of the lottery, which allows a ceremonial murder to become part of their town’s tradition, without purpose of doing it, besides the fact they’ve forever held a lottery to stone someone due to the belief that the crops will come soon. For the villagers, the lottery is a tradition that stems from a superstition, which is a good enough reason and all the justification they need …show more content…

In the short story “The Lottery”, the tradition being practiced is merely continued to keep the tradition alive. Danger is not the worst outcome of blindly following an old tradition, but the effects that it is causing, which is death. It is natural for traditions to change over a period of time and it is important to continue to learn and have knowledge on why one practices and participates in this tradition. However, by attaching to one single tradition and continuing to practice that tradition without change brings the village back to a level of their traditions’ originators, which causes tragic outcomes. It is clear that these villagers have completely forgotten the meaning of this traditional lottery. The main problem is that an outcome of this ignorance, is that they continue to practice these traditions regardless and commit murder every year on June 27th. Shirley Jackson portrays the dangerous, and inhuman outcomes of when a village blindly follows a tradition ignorantly. The message in the short story “The Lottery” is prevalent in our everyday society and readers must learn from these stories, and educate themselves on all their traditions they are following the best they can and modernize them as needed. Traditions continuously revolutionize as our world does, we mustn’t let ourselves be ignorant to what we practice within our hometowns, country, and

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