The Values Of Morality In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, we see the picture of a model town that, like most Southern Baptists, are stuck in their ways. What they refer to as the Lottery is an annual process, occurring on June 27th, in which each head of household will choose a slip of paper out of a box and the “winner,” well, doesn’t really win. In fact, the so called winner of the first round of the lottery wins his whole family a trip to the box for one more turn! The next person, no matter the age, that picks the paper with the mark on it, is stoned by the entire town. It’s preposterous to actually think people would enjoy this yearly ceremony, but they do. Throughout the story we see three different standpoints on this gruesome tradition that is embodied by Old Man Warner, Mr. Summers, and the younger adults and kids. All of the people go along with the tradition and some even look forward to it, however when it happens to them they cry, “It isn’t fair.” In the story, Old Man Warner is the man who has a stiff-necked mindset as old and decrepit as he is. We find

Summers, he represents the people that are content with the things that they do, they would just like to make miniscule changes to make it better. Generally, people don’t change things. Though the lottery had been a town tradition for more than seventy-seven years, people still didn’t want to change things about it. Mr. Summers, in charge of the lottery, found that the box they used to draw from was starting to lose its flair. He suggested, multiple times, to build a new box. The box would bring a sense of newness to the Lottery; a way of changing things up. It wasn’t because it needed newness, it was because Mr. Summers was fine with the tradition he just wanted to dress it up. Mr. Summers was really just gilding the ceremony. Mr. Summers is almost like Old Man Warner, in his desire to keep things going, but he represents the middle of the social age group in the desire to make it