Hypocrisy In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

In the short story, “The Lottery” (1948) by Shirley Jackson, the characters face their fates, which are determined by playing in the town’s annual lottery. Villagers gather in the town square to participate in the drawing of the lottery that is officiated by Mr. Summers. Each villager, no matter the age, has to draw one piece of paper from an old black box and whoever draws the piece with the black dot is the winner of the lottery. Sometimes in life, it is necessary to take certain chances regardless if that means blindly taking those chances; however, the natives of the community are willingly taking a chance of death by playing the lottery. There are many different themes in this story; however I will only focus on hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform. The village as a whole practices hypocrisy by appearing to have good values and by suppressing opposing ideas.

The hypocrisy theme stuck out the most in this story because this town seems to be filled with morally good people and values.

Everything about this village seems normal; the kids go to school and play together and the adults are dead set on the loyalty of tradition, which most communities are, but the tradition they carry are not usual for any small village. On the outside, looking in, one might think that this is a peaceful place where everyone is living happily without a care in the world. However, this is not the case because the people residing here are willingly stoning other residents to death for no known reason. They only keep the lottery going because they know it is a tradition that has been around for over one hundred years, but they do not know the reasons behind this

tradition.
Many of the characters show hypocrisy throughout the story by suppressing opposing ideas. It seemed to be a lot of back and forth between opinions and loyalties from many of the characters, especially Mrs. Hutchinson. In the beginning, she started out being nonchalant about the lottery. Initially, she pretends to support the lottery but she did not seem to care about the outcome. She showed this by arriving late, claiming that she forgot what day it was because she was in the middle of washing dishes; however, the lottery is an annual event and everyone in town is aware when the time for it is approaching, including her family that she had to have noticed were not home. After Mrs. Hutchinson’s husband became the winner of the lottery, all of her previous support of it shifted. She becomes upset and wants to have a re-draw of the lottery because she believes her husband was not given an adequate amount of time to pull a piece of paper from the box. The whole time, she is aware of the evils of the lottery, but she never comes forward and express her true opinions on it because it is a tradition and she does not want to be looked at as an outsider.
In conclusion, The Lottery is a short story by Shirley Jackson about a village of people who face their fates, which are determined by playing in the town’s annual lottery. Villagers gather in the town square to participate in the drawing of the lottery that is officiated by Mr. Summers. Each villager, no matter the age, has to draw one piece of paper from an old black box and whoever draws the piece with the black dot is the winner of the lottery. The biggest them that stuck out in the story is hypocrisy. The village as a whole practices hypocrisy by appearing to have good values and by suppressing opposing ideas.