Mob Mentality In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Mob Mentality in Fiction and Real Life

“In some societies, traditions have been in place for thousands of years. They are difficult to change since they are woven into individuals’ sense of self. People often feel that their own traditions are normal, even though anthropologists claim that few traditions are universal among cultures” (Jackson 856). In “The Lottery” the villagers gathered together for a harvest ritual, to my surprise I felt an eerie connection based on my own experiences growing up in a small farming community. “The Lottery” was written by Shirley Jackson and released in the New Yorker, to much dismay, in 1948. Jackson’s short story involved a small village performing their annual lottery in the hope that it would yield

better crops for that years crop. However as the story progresses we(the reader) come to realize that villages upholding decades old traditions seem to happen out of habit more than a rational reason. As the villagers gathered together to carry out the traditions of the annual lottery; I realized that I had similarities between this fictitious farming town and my own. Mob mentality can convince an entire group of people to make poor decisions, and in extreme cases even lead to death.
I grew up in a small town in central Illinois. My graduating class was seventy-three students, and the only sport that anyone paid attention to was basketball. It was the life blood of my little town; everyone talked about it, went to the games, and relieved great moments from the past successful years. I was a Sophomore when this story takes place, and at tryouts that year myself and eight of my friends were assigned to the Varsity team. Leading up to the homecoming game our team was undefeated, and the town was buzzing with talk of our first “real” contest of the year. The homecoming game happened in the first two weeks of November, and was one of the most important events to happen each year in my town. There was a parade, pep rally, and our school celebrated spirit week leading up to the Saturday of the game. Much like the villagers in Jackson’s “The Lottery”, this was an event the entire town came out to watch. In “The Lottery”, Jackson wrote: “Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes” (857); that is how homecoming week was for our town. Everyone gathered in groups and spoke and guessed who would win the game, what students were going to the dance afterwards, and most importantly the town tried to guess what would happen after the dance.
On the weekend of the game the timeline is as follows: Friday morning practice, homecoming game that night, Saturday morning is the “homecoming” practice, and Saturday night was the dance. After the dance was always the unknown. It was different every year. Growing up I had heard stories of loud parties with multiple kegs and other years there was nothing to be told or gossiped about. This year, my first homecoming year, was to be different than all the rest because a group of seniors had planned an epic party. The rumors had been flying for weeks, and had been so outlandish that our head basketball coach had been warning us to keep safe and not to get involved in this party. He became so worried that he was going to lose players to DUIs or something worse that he planned an extra tough “Homecoming Practice” for the day after the game. After reading the short story I could imagine coach acting as worried as Old Man Warner saying that we were a “Pack of crazy fools” (Jackson, 861). The sole purpose of the practice was to wear us out to the point we would not want to party that night. After our win at the homecoming game, we came to practice that next morning and were dominated by the five hours of conditioning that followed. As we left that practice coach had a smile on his face, believing he had accomplished his goal, and we were all just excited for the party that night. Much like Bobby Martin stuffing rocks into his pockets at the beginning of “The Lottery” we were starting out on a night that would end in disaster.
That night multiple things happened, but I want to focus on myself and my fellow sophomore basketball teammates.

We had never been to a party, besides a few nights were we split a case of beer, upon arrival to the party, it was clear, we were in over our heads. There was an open bar, twenty-two kegs, and a table with an array of different types of drugs. Much like the town members in “The Lottery”, mob mentality took over myself and my group of friends as we were convinced to partake in the different libations of the night. As the night progressed so did the items that we were consuming. We started with beer and didn’t think to much of it, but when a group of seniors came and challenged us to do Jager bombs the night took off. We were all concerned, at first, but as the alcohol soaked into our brains we were just looking for the next thing to take our mind off how sore our bodies were from the earlier practice. Until finally it was time to leave, and piss drunk we all climbed into vehicles to drive home. I was in a lifted Jeep Cherokee with six of my teammates when the driver lost control and went off the road. As we were barreling toward a tree line the car seemed to increase in speed, and when the vehicle hit two large elm trees the car stopped instantly. Myself and the driver were thrown through the windshield, and everyone else in the backseat collided with the foot and a half diameter limb that went through the center of the windshield. The limb broke my best friends arm, broke another friends nose, and it had stopped on our starting point guards chest. What we didn’t realize was that the limb had crushed his ribcage and fluid was pouring into his lungs. Luckily, none of us were knocked out except for him, and we were able to call 911, the paramedics got their quickly, and he was airlifted to a hospital about twenty minutes away. Waiting for the ambulance was terrible, my friend was laying helpless on the ground, coughing up blood and struggling

to breathe. He reminded me of Mrs. Hutchinson at the end of the story yelling: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” (Jackson, 863). He survived, and we all now look back at how fortunate we were that we didn’t lose a friend.
That night still haunts myself and my friends to this day. We have always compared it to mob mentality, so when that was the theme of “The Lottery”, it was easy to pick that story to correlate to my own experiences. We all felt terrified for so long after that event, but the villagers in the story were not terrified, they looked forward to the lottery to help the harvest that year. Looking back there are things in my life and things I would not change, but almost dying with my friends is something I would always do differently.

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology For Readers and Writers. 6th ed. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
2015. 857-863. Print.