Morality In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery seems to suggest that people who embed rituals deeply into their beliefs, without critical thought, can be blind to the flaws of their tradition until they are the victims. As farfetched as the wide acceptance of ritual killing may seem, one can easily relate to the mentality that the villagers have towards the importance of tradition, and how difficult it is to question one’s beliefs. Careful attention to the details of character and conflict can help reveal the central idea of the story.

A number of details about the ritual of the lottery show how deeply embedded this tradition is. The people of the village, who take on the role of the protagonist, view an old, worn down black box containing slips of paper

for the lottery as an important piece of tradition. The old beaten down black box represents the lottery itself, and how far past its “expiration date” it is. The villager’s admiration to this beat down box is representative of their blind, unconditional loyalty to flawed traditions. The villagers seem to make a habit of following traditions. All throughout the story there are references to traditional family roles, “Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and the rain, tractors and taxes...The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their men-folk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands” (638). This quote really helps to describe who the villagers are. The villagers are people who fear to live a life that strays away from traditional American values. This mindset of blindly following tradition is what may have allowed the lottery to turn out the way it did.
The lottery is a product of generations of people who fear to stray away from their beliefs. Old Man Warner is a prime example of this. Old Man Warner, at age 77, is the oldest man in the town of about three hundred people. Old Man Warner discusses the lottery with Mr. and Mrs. Adams, and the married couple brings up the fact that people in the north are thinking about giving up the lottery, and some places have already quit lotteries. Old Man Warner quickly responds to the couple saying that the people in the north are a “Pack of crazy fools” (641). He even goes of on a tangent of what he believes is a possible consequence of living without a lottery. “Listening to the young folks, nothings good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while” (641). Old Man Warner displays the irrational, fearful behavior that can have stagnant effects on the progression of society. Old Man Warner’s stubborn attitude is echoed throughout the rest of the village, and it is that stubbornness that causes flawed traditions to be rooted deeply into society, and new ideas to be rejected.
The villagers are quick to completely turn on any villager who opposes the lottery or tries to rebel in any way.

(Man vs. society)? This is exactly what happened with Tessie Hutchinson. When Bill Hutchinson, Tessie’s husband, discovers that he won the lottery, Tessie immediately begins to say that the lottery was not conducted fairly. Instead of the villagers showing support to Tessie in this dark moment, the villagers turn on her, and tell her to “be a good sport” (642). Even Tessie’s own husband tells her to shut up. When the lottery is redone, Tessie discovers that she is now the winner. When Mr. Summers asks Bill to present Tessie’s slip, “Bill Hutchison went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand” (643). Bill is making it obvious to Tessie that she angered him with her opposition to the lottery. When it is time for her to be stoned by the villagers, not even her family will hesitate to throw

stones.
Shortly before the climax, when Tessie is hit in the head with a stone, the villagers zone in on Tessie Hutchison with stones in his or her hands, disregarding anyone emotional attachment to her, solely to maintain the flawed ritual.

Jackson adds, “Although the villagers forgot the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (643). The villagers have foolishly let random aspects of the ritual fall at waist side, yet they cling to one aspect of the ritual, the murder. The villagers are hypocrites who do not want to “upset as much tradition as was represented by the box” (639), but forget everything else. As the crowd of villagers closes in on Tessie, she shouts, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right” (643). This dramatic cry functions as the epiphany. As Tessie’s life is about to end, she receives a sudden clarity and realizes the true nature of the lottery. The greatest victim of blindly followed rituals, are the people following the ritual

themselves.
The climax and epiphany, which close this story, suggests that once the rituals that Tessie carelessly followed her whole life victimized her, the veil was lifted on this foolish ritual and suddenly she saw things with the rationality that was suppressed for years. Tessie had her whole life to take a stand against the lottery. It is likely that Tessie once stoned a woman shouting the same words Tessie did at the end of her life, while staring her victim in the eye. Many other villagers probably experienced what Tessie experienced, and the only way to stop the cycle is to protest before it is too late.