The Wicked Ways of the World

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In her story “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson attacks social conformity and cultural mindlessness. Even though stoning someone to death is incredibly inhumane, the townsfolk still carry on tradition in fear of what might happen if the lottery was abolished. Also, the one person who rises against the lottery, Mrs. Hutchinson, ends up being the one who gets the “honor” of winning the lottery, which indirectly shows that those who cry out against conformity get punished, proving that maybe conformity is the only chance people have at survival and safety.
In the story, the townspeople all gather every year for the “lottery,” but instead of winning a prize like someone would think, the winner of this lottery gets stoned to death. Early in the story it is made clear that the lottery is an old tradition, so old in fact that even the oldest man in the town wasn’t alive to see the original box that the names were drawn from. This shows that the generations in the story aren’t the only ones who, instead of doing what is right, simply do what has always been done.
Old Man Warner plays an important part in the story. Although he is oldest man in the town, even he didn’t see the origins of the lottery. Also, when people begin to talk about how other towns have considered doing away with the lottery, he snorted, “Pack of crazy fools,” (Jackson 4) showing that the people have gotten so used to the horrific event that talk of anything different seems completely foreign and absurd. Old Man Warner even murmurs on another occasion, “Pack of young fools” (Jackson 4) when it was mentioned that some places have actually gotten rid of the lottery, showing that the thought of no lottery doesn’t make any sense.
Mob mentality is something that the villager...

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...d Jackson attacks conformity and mindlessness by providing a scenario where social conformity has gotten so out of hand that the people can easily commit a murder, even though they are unsure of why they are doing it. Their minds have been changed so much by mob mentality that they really don’t know right from wrong. No matter how wrong the tradition seems from the outside looking in, on the inside they are simply following tradition, and tradition is never wrong to those who follow it. In other words, the tradition continued simply because they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong.

Works Cited

Coulthard, A.R. “Jackson’s ‘The Lottery.’” Explicator 48.3 (1990) 226-228. EBSCO web. 11 March 2014
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Short Stories for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 13. Detroit: Gale. eNotes.com. January 2006. Web. 11 March 2014

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