What is conformity? Conformity is a law, or social standards that people have to obey. Conformity are crucial parts of fitting in with a society when a person beliefs or have different opinions. Traditions are part of conformity that changes people to act different. Many cultures have a rule and it is a very powerful rule they have to follow. Conformity is what every one of us does and it can be simple but we do not know it. Although conformity can be helpful in some situation, “The Lottery “by Shirley Jackson, is an example of what can happen when they abuse and take conformity too far. In Shirley Jackson “The Lottery,” conformity is the behavior that they have to adjust to match with the groups. Every year, the villages gather around and …show more content…
Shirley Jackson reading says, “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took away days and had to started on June 26th. but the village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner” (283). The villagers continued to maintain the lottery the same year. The lottery starts in the afternoon and the villagers get together in a specific order starting with the children, then the men, then the rest of the village. In addition, “the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before old man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born” (Jackson 284). Warner is an old man who has been around for so long to witness the lottery. Warner is “ As we see in “The Lottery,” while the little kids are growing up, they teach them what to do but do not explain why they are doing it, and what the consequences are if they behave certain way. Many people have a respect for …show more content…
However, conformity is an idea of “The Lottery.” Although some of the people in the villages do not agree with the lottery or the idea of it, they had no choice but to go along with it unless they will reject or killed by the group’s .The village gossip and talk bad things about other village who decided to stop having Lottery. Some of them wants to stop as well but sacred to outcast it. Not to mention, Old Man Warner says, “Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody works anymore, live that way for a while” (Jackson 286). He believes that the villages that stopped the lottery are crazy, and thinks that they will surely go back to old ways and continue the lottery in no time. That shows us an example of how the villagers would rather conform to what majority of the village approves rather than what they believe that is true or knows that is right. Furthermore, little Davy is included in this story because he is one of the Hutchinson family that were picked to pick out paper from the box for his mother “Tessie”. As we see in the story, Mr. Summers said “take just one paper,’’ Harry, you hold it for him.” Mr. Graves took the child’s hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Davy stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly” (Jackson 288). Davy does not understand why they picked him to pick out paper or the
Attention Getter: Shirley Jacksons, The Lottery, without a doubt expresses her thoughts regarding traditional rituals throughout her story. It opens the eyes of us readers to suitably organize and question some of the today's traditions as malicious and it allows foretelling the conclusion of these odd traditions. The Lottery is a short story that records the annual sacrifice ceremony of an unreal small town. It is a comprehensive story of the selection of the person to be sacrificed, a procedure known to the villagers as the lottery. This selection is enormously rich in symbolism.
Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery” satirically creates a society that puts the importance of tradition above even the life of the members of the community, as indicated by Old Man Warner’s response to Mr. Adams stating, “‘[O]ver in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.’ Old Man Warner snorted. ‘Pack of crazy fools … Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them … There’s always been a lottery,’ he added petulantly” (413). Here Old Man Warner defends the tradition of their society, though notably without justifying the tradition. Rather, he focuses on the people of other villages and the tradition as self-evident, both logical fallacies. The first argument he makes in favor of continuing to have a lottery is an ad
In “The Lottery,” the town put so much importance on tradition. As the townspeople were getting ready, Mr. Summers said, “Guess we better get started, get this over with…” (Jackson 2). Even though the town is getting ready to do the lottery, the people do not like to do it. This is very odd because if people do not like to do something, people tend to stop doing the activity.
Everyone has their own way of solving problems; however, ritual is a form that people doing one thing in the same way. It defines as “the prescribed form of conducting a formal secular ceremony.” However if the meaning of ritual is mistaken, the consequence could be unpredictable." The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson gives us a lecture about a tortuous ritual. The story takes place in a small village with 300 citizens, they gather for a yearly lottery which everyone should participate. The story leads to a horrific ending by people forgetting the concept of ritual.
Tradition is a central theme in Shirley Jackon's short story The Lottery. Images such as the black box and characters such as Old Man Warner, Mrs. Adams, and Mrs. Hutchinson display to the reader not only the tenacity with which the townspeople cling to the tradition of the lottery, but also the wavering support of it by others. In just a few pages, Jackson manages to examine the sometimes long forgotten purpose of rituals, as well as the inevitable questioning of the necessity for such customs.
Shirley Jackson?s insights and observations about society are reflected in her shocking and disturbing short story The Lottery. Jackson reveals two general attitudes in this story: first is the shocking tendency for societies to select a scapegoat and second is the idea that communities are victims of social tradition and rituals.
As old man Warner said, "There 's always been a lottery” (Jackson 4). This shows that the villagers have a lack of ability to change over time. No person in the town would stand up and say that this violent ritual was absurd, making them all out to be hypocrites just as Tessie was. Instead of doing so, one villager, Mr. Adams, comments that other towns around them were giving up the lottery, as if to suggest their town should do so as well. In reply old man Warner said, "Pack of crazy fools” (Jackson 4), and then, "Listening to the young folks, nothings good enough for them” (Jackson 4). Old man Warner can in a sense be seen as a symbol of the town and their lack of change. He disapproves of anything that isn’t what he views as a traditional social practice. Old man Warner’s quick defense of the lottery implies that he sees change as an attack on himself and his beliefs. Blindly following tradition can cause the rejection of non-conformity in a society, even those traditions that are full of
Yearly rituals are accepted by most people and the reasons behind the celebrations are unknown to most people. Americans practice different annual traditions such as Fourth of July, Easter egg hunt, Halloween, Veterans Day and more. Likewise for Shirley Jackson, a wife, mother, and author of six novels, two memoirs, and a collection of short stories including “The Lottery.” Jackson’s short twisted story, “The Lottery,” portrays a ritual almost as old as the town itself, especially for the fact that there’s no remembrance from the villagers or the oldest man, Old Man Warner, the real reason for the ceremony. Jackson’s story describes a brutal custom in a small village that punishes the winner of the lottery; however, Jackson uses irony, characters and symbolism to support her story. Jackson’s purpose in The Lottery is to demonstrate that conformity can be helpful in some situations but damages those who choose not to conform.
When breaking news is being told the majority of the population just accepts what they hear and do not bother to research facts or more information about the issue or subject. In the village, the same type of cycle happens. Although the towns folk question the lottery, none of them bother to speak out since everyone is fixed on tradition, leading them to blindly follow in this cruel act every year. Jackson shows that the townsfolk don’t really have a strong knowledge as to how the lottery came to be, but they try to preserve the tradition anyway. This is the same way humans tend to listen and are naïve to new things they hear. Old man Warner in the village looks down upon the other towns that have removed the lottery calling them a “pack of crazy fools” (Jackson). His opinion is that without the lottery, the villagers will return back to their primitive ancestral behaviors. Since no one has spoken out against the lottery, this allowed stoning or murder has become normal to the people of the village. They feel as if they cannot change or even try to change any parts of the tradition, however, no one is forcing them to keep doing the lottery. These villagers are so
These characters are not cognizant of the idea that what they are enacting every year is basically murder. They show this ignorance through a very pedestrian exchange between Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Delacroix, “Clean forgot what day it was… thought my old man was out back stacking wood,” Mrs. Hutchinson went on, “and then I looked out the window…and came a-running” (141-42). This short conversation has the essence of an ordinary, every-day chit-chat between two women but in reality Hutchinson forgets that the lottery is about to start. Since the villagers do not know any different, they react to the lottery this way because they have no idea what it is to live without this ritual. Sadly, this society’s way of thinking is a fetter to them. Villagers who realize how despicable the practice really is are the ones chosen to be stoned, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,”Mrs. Hutchinson screamed and then they were upon her” (146). This a reaction that is purely human and is written into the story to show how surmountable it is to break the meaning of the tradition in one person. Then the villagers who have not been chosen in the lottery have no knowledge of what it feels to see your imminent death in the form of rocks. In addition, Jackson chooses the events in her to prove a point about
In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the theme of the story is dramatically illustrated by Jackson’s unique tone. Once a year the villagers gather together in the central square for the lottery. The villagers await the arrival of Mr. Summers and the black box. Within the black box are folded slips of paper, one piece having a black dot on it. All the villagers then draw a piece of paper out of the box. Whoever gets the paper with the black dot wins. Tessie Hutchinson wins the lottery! Everyone then closes in on her and stones her to death. Tessie Hutchinson believes it is not fair because she was picked. The villagers do not know why the lottery continues to exist. All they know is that it is a tradition they are not willing to abandon. In “The Lottery,” Jackson portrays three main themes including tradition, treason, and violence.
Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery,” was published in 1948 and remains to this day one of the most enduring and affecting American works in the literary canon. “The Lottery” tells the story of a farming community that holds a ritualistic lottery among its citizens each year. Although the text initially presents audiences with a close-knit community participating in a social event together on a special day, the shocking twist at the work’s end—with the death of the lottery’s “winner” by public stoning—has led to its widespread popularity, public outcry and discussion, and continued examination in modern times (Jackson). One potential critical theory that can be applied to Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the reader-response approach. This analytical lens is a “theory ... that bases the critical perspective of a text on ‘the reader’ and his or her personal interpretation” of that text (Parker 314). Reader-response criticism was coined by literary critic Louise Rosenblatt in the mid-20th century. It soon served as a cornerstone of literary movement in the 1960s and 1970s that later became intrinsic to the study of other schools of literary thought today. In using reader-response theory to examine “The Lottery” in a contemporary context, one might perform reading surveys and metacognitive questionnaires to determine whether the short story still proves resonant and thought-provoking. Therefore, just as “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson evoked an explicit and even fierce reaction in the past, so too does the use of reader-response criticism today help reveal that the short story may still hold the ability to sustain both its rising tension and surprising turn at the end.
Within the short story of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the villagers of the small town continually conduct the annual lottery, culminating in a violent murder each year. As the residents are indifferent to the unquestioned tradition of the drawing, they also fail to realize their blind acceptance of the ritual, regardless of the atrocity it holds. Complex interactions between the characters in dialogue emphasize their inability to entirely accept the grim results of the lottery. The intricate synergy of the community conveys the agreement among a social contract, providing benefits and enabling sacrifices upon the innocent. As the end of the lottery nears, “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in
At the beginning of the story it starts out seeming like an ordinary civilized community where everyone gets along. In the first sentence of the story “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.”(Jackson). Even though the towns people knew what day it was and what happens on July 27th they had no problem with gathering in the town center to get the lottery under way. The kids would start gathering first, then the men, and then the women and they all would present themselves wearing nice cloths as if attending a special event. This became such a tradition that people even forgot about it and this is made evident when Mrs. Hutchinson said “and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running" (Jackson). Mrs. Hutchinson had put a target on her back from then on because she was seen as an outsider or not normal because she had joined the group late. “The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of their town fabric.” (Sparknote
Would you believe that there was once a village where everyone would partake in a terrible event, but think it was innocent because of how they blindly followed a tradition? The short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson communicates this theme by showing how the villagers participate in a lottery every year. In life, there are people who follow tradition because they have to, or they are used to following without question. The author, Shirley Jackson, was born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, California. In 1937, Shirley Jackson attended Syracuse University where she began to write short stories.