Human Troubles And Evils In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

The idea of winning a lottery connected with luck, happiness, and anticipation of good things. In Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery” this is not the case. The irony of the story is that the winner of the lottery gets stoned to death by everyone else in the town. The story is very effective because it examines certain aspects of human nature. Jackson illustrates how human troubles and evils are expected to grow far worse in this age. Attached to a tradition so firmly and blindly the townspeople decide whether they will choose humanity and love, between an overwhelming culture laced with fear, and selfishness. Jackson has portrayed a message in “The Lottery” which, is following tradition blindly. Every year, the town’s people gather in the

square to draw. The person who draws the black dot from the box must bring their family up to draw also. Whichever family member draws the black dot, gets stoned. This is following tradition blindly most likely because the people in “The Lottery” have no clue why they are doing the things they do. They are just doing what they have always done, which is following the tradition blindly.

When she first appeared in this story, Tessie Hutchison was a happy and calm person until significant problems started to occur during the lottery. Jackson has represented conflict to have a critical role in this storyline, by revealing both internal and external conflicts within the character’s actions. An internal conflict is portrayed through all the characters that would disagree with what they were thinking. Hence, Tessie’s internal conflict would be, she does not want to be chosen in the second drawing. At the end of the story, this quote was revealed when Tessie yells “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” (Jackson 7). Tessie makes this statement emphasizing how it was not fair that she did not get a second chance to draw again in honor of her family. Even though they were not many people who lived in the same village, none of them fought for what is right. Which is letting Tessie pick a new paper from the box, exposing how there was no emotional regret in any of the townspeople that made Tessie die. Nonetheless, Jackson positioned this statement to be the last sentence before Tessie got stoned to death, this is because if the story was to be further explained, there would not be a solution to this problem.

In contrast to this behavior, Jackson also portrays the external conflict in the story which is considered as ‘person vs. society’ because Tessie argues with the townspeople about the lottery and how she thought it was unfair. When the Hutchison family was chosen , Tessie yelled at Mr. Summers “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted, I saw you, it wasn’t fair” followed up with Mrs. Graves and Mrs. Delacroix saying “Be a good sport Tessie”, “All of us took the same chance” (Jackson 5). The three women revealed these quotes accentuating how no one cared about Tessie, Mrs. Graves and Mrs. Delacroix told her to not worry about being stoned to death, but in fact, they were encouraging her because they did not want to be the individual who ends up dying by choosing the wrong paper slip. When Mrs. Delacroix told Tessie that everyone took the same chance as her, it sends a sense of irony to the reader. This is because her name means ‘of the cross’ in French, which is supposed to represent her as a soulful person but instead, Jackson revealed the complete opposite of her grabbing the most massive piece of rock and throwing it at Tessie at the end of the story. This showcases how Mrs. Delacroix and Mrs. Graves are both blindly following the tradition of the lottery and do not care who dies.

Jackson does not reveal who the main characters are and no additional information about anyone expect Old Man Warner. However, the protagonist in this story is the person who is trying to reach a specific goal, which is trying to redo the draw in the lottery. The protagonist in the story could be both, the townspeople and Tessie. The townspeople have a goal of keeping the tradition, and they want to stone someone to fulfill that. Tessie could be the protagonist because she is trying to have the townspeople redo the ceremony. Nonetheless, the antagonist in the story is the person who is trying to keep Tessie from reaching her goal; this could be referred to the townspeople. This is because the townspeople are not going to redo the ceremony, and Tessie is trying with everything she has to stop the tradition. As the story evolves furthermore, Jackson uncovers more conflict within both the protagonist and antagonist, by disclosing how there are always townspeople who want to follow tradition to keep going. By having the townspeople create more conflict and as they disagree with the culture.

Danger plays a significant role in religious traditions and violence that within the lottery because the people in the town were oblivious to any evil actions when they were taking someone’s life.

They thought of it as only preserving the town’s tradition. They were convinced that it was a reasonable thing to do because it has been done for over seventy years. When Tessie was finally chosen as the winner, the narrator reveals “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.” (Jackson 7). The narrator uncovers this because Tessie’s family even wanted her to get stoned because they do not want to get stoned themselves. Even when the Hutchinson family was chosen, Mr. Summers asked if there are any households in their family, without hesitation, Tessie yells “There are Don and Eva, make them take their chance” (Jackson 5). In this statement, Jackson reveals that Tessie wanted her daughters who were already married to take their chance so she would have a better chance not to get chosen and she was their mom, she would rather have her daughter get stoned then her. All of statements and actions all relate back to violence, by not even caring that your very own family member wants you chosen. The townspeople are so naïve thinking that killing innocent people is the right action to do, just because it is a tradition, so they have to honor it by stoning individuals to

death.

Nonetheless, the townspeople show their blind approval of tradition in their failure to understand the purpose of the lottery. Often, people who blindly follow tradition do so without ever considering the meaning of the culture. The townspeople apparently lack a desire to understand the purpose behind the tradition because, over time, the specific directions of the lottery have either been ignored or forgotten. However, the narrator reveals how “the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago” (Jackson 1), however, the town continued to follow the mindless tradition stupidly. Although the townspeople did attempt to remember the essentials of the lottery, they did not want to improve upon the tradition either. When improvements were suggested, such as Mr. Summers suggestion “about making a new box” (Jackson 1), no one seemed excited, because “no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (Jackson 1). This is because the black box is at the heart of the tradition, it is a religious artifact that represents tradition. The narrator reveals that although the box itself is falling apart, the townspeople maintain it and are despise to replacing it just like how they don’t want to give up the lottery. People often keep their darkest thoughts locked away in their minds. The black box could symbolize the human spirit, and explain why the townspeople’s motive for continuing the tradition of killing innocent villagers.

As a person who is involved in the lottery, Jackson has made the story very unfair to individual characters that portray how the lottery is a waste of time.

The Lottery has injustice in it because they stone one villager at random for no particular reason. Some may argue that it is just because everyone has a fair chance at getting killed but when focusing on the fact that they are getting killed. Their only reason for the lottery is the tradition, and they are worried about what will happen if they stop even though a lot of other villagers have stopped. Making the lottery injustice shows how each family that gets the paper with the dot has to go again, but the ones that are married are not considered part of the family. Mr. Summers does choose the family reasonably but it is not fair even if they did not want to do it they still have to, and there is a chance that any individual dies. When Tessie yells “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair”, further explaining how it was unfair that her family was chosen. Nevertheless, the lottery is an injustice because all of the villagers are still blindly following this silly tradition of killing people that receive the black dot on their slip, there should be a real reason to why killing harmless people is a good

action.

In conclusion from the story, we can see that the presence of this tradition and culture was too overwhelming for the townspeople to ignore. They felt obliged to carry out the process every year even though they know the consequences of the ritual. No one is spared as the tradition encompasses every person in the community – big or small. The fact that everyone is so closely tied being a community of only 300, one would expect that everyone would care, but a symbol of irony is that those very people would be ready to stone each other to death if the time came.