Conformity In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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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

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