Traditions: The Lottery and An American Honor Killing

In the completely different backgrounds of the story The Lottery and the article An American Honor Killing, both cultures have crazy traditions that their people are expected to follow, no matter how inhumane or difficult they can be. In the small village in The Lottery, the citizens are expected to randomly draw names and kill whoever is picked, whereas in the Iraqi culture portrayed in the article An American Honor Killing, the Iraqi people are expected to live and abide by the traditions and lifestyles. These completely different cultures show that tradition plays a very big role in society, but some traditions can be violent and outrageous.

In The Lottery, inhumane and cruel traditions are the general plot of the story. Once a year, the town randomly chooses a person to sacrifice in a process known as the lottery. The ‘winner’ of the lottery could be anyone: all the citizens of the town have an equal chance of being picked. The friends and family of the winner immediately turn against them and instinctively lose any feelings of respect for the person and begin to stone them to death. Tradition is tradition and the lottery is all that anyone has ever known. The town doesn’t even realize what they’re doing is wrong and cruel – they just follow orders because they’ve always had a lottery and they can’t imagine life without one. “‘Some places have already quit lotteries.’ Mr. Adams said. ‘Nothing but trouble in that,’ Old Man Warner said stoutly. ‘Pack of young fools’” (Jackson 4). Although other towns are quitting the lotteries because they realize they’re wrong and unjust, this village refuses to stray from tradition. A tradition so inhumane and violent should be abandoned, but unfortunately no one sees it that way until they wi...

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...The Lottery which is to sacrifice their own friends and family every year for the sake of their crop. Both traditions go to the extremes, but Iraqi traditions don’t always end in violence and death, unlike the tradition in The Lottery.

In closing, the different cultures portrayed in the story The Lottery and the article An American Honor Killing follow outrageous and sometimes even inhumane rituals and lifestyles, just for the sake of carrying on tradition. These traditions in the story and article range from stoning a fellow villager to restraining Iraqi children from becoming any part of the American culture or having an American lifestyle. Even though some traditions are inhumane and unfair, customs in different cultures play a huge role in society.

Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, 1991. 1-5 Print.