Shirley Jackson's unsettling short story "The Lottery" tells of an act of human sacrifice committed in twentieth-century America. Much emphasis is given to the bucolic setting of the sacrifice, which takes place among summer blossoms and "richly green grass" in a quaint town square, and is committed by close-knit farming families who are normally engaged in the homely business of raising crops and children. The villagers in the story have all lived together for generations and have a very strong sense of community. They embrace the lottery in the same spirit with which they embrace their other traditions: as a natural, necessary part of the year. They do not remember when or why it began, and admittedly, a lot of information about the lottery has been "forgotten or discarded" over the years, but this does not diminish the centrality of the tradition to the community.
Indeed, the loss of knowledge and material concerning the lottery seems to make what remains more sacred to the villagers, by endowing the remaining artifacts with a sense of mystery and myth. As Jackson describes:
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done.
Memories among the villagers vary as to some aspects of the ritual, e.g., the "perfunctory, tuneless chant" that the lottery official used to sing, and how he or she moved when singing it, or the "ritual salute" the lottery official had to use "in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box." These things have been "allowed to lapse" and the current lottery is a very pared-down ritual compared to what it used to be. The flourishes have fallen away over the years, and all that remains is the lottery's central purpose: determining which villager will be sacrificed for the health of the community.
There's mention of other villages giving up the practice of the lottery in these modern times, but Old Man Warner speaks for this village when he declares:
"Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon' . . . There's always been a lottery[.]"
The ritual must be maintained, regardless of people's objections to it. Tessie Hutchinson, the story's unlucky victim, protests vehemently when her household "wins" the lottery, and screams, "It isn't fair, it isn't right" when she is selected for the sacrifice. It's reasonable to assume that each year's victim is similarly horrified to "win," so it's interesting to see how well the villagers get along, considering that they annually participate in murdering one of their number. That indicates just how tightly knit the community feels itself to be, and how essential they believe the lottery is to their continued collective well-being. And so, despite losing all extraneous information about the lottery, they have preserved its true reason:
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.
The peaceful setting and amiable characters of the story belie the naked brutality at its heart, in perhaps the same way the "tuneless chant" and "ritual salute" once served to obscure the true nature of the lottery, drawing a veil of polite form over savage function.
Shirley writes that original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost a long time ago, but the black box remained. Despite the black box's withered appearance, the community refuses to replace it because it does not want to upset the tradition. Shirley also writes that much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, and the chips of wood had been replaced with slips of paper since the community began to grow. There had also been a ritual where the official conducting the lottery chanted and saluted the citizens before drawing the chips of wood, which has also been forgotten. While Mr. Summers is drawing the slips of paper, Mrs. Adams remarks that some villages have quit holding lotteries altogether.
The fact that the lottery continues to change over the years and various aspects of it are forgotten or discarded illustrates its superficial, meaningless nature. The community's inability to remember certain routines while simultaneously holding such a brutal, savage ritual illustrates the dangers of blindly following tradition. Similar to the insignificant rituals that have been lost or forgotten, the origins of the lottery are unknown, yet the community continues to stone a random innocent citizen each year simply because it's tradition.
The superficial elements of the lottery have evolved over the years, such as the actual box holding the names of the townspeople and the pieces of paper on which the names are written. Various rituals around the official of the lottery have also changed, and the reactions of the townspeople to the lottery itself are also different than reactions of the past.
The fundamental aspect of the lottery, however, which is the fact that whomever draws the black spot is immediately stoned to death by the rest of the townspeople, has never changed. This steadfastness and unquestioning attachment to tradition is what makes the story so chilling. The origins of the tradition are not explained, nor are any reasons behind the tradition described, so every year, an innocent person is stoned to death for no purpose except to follow blindly a tradition that nobody questions.
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